MOTHER OF INVENTION

It's Incarceration, If The Homemade Smokes And Booze Cooked Up By Inmates
At The Jackson County Jail Are Any Indication

Forced to quit cold turkey, inmates serving time at the Jackson County Jail
are going to great lengths to make their own cigarettes and booze.

What's even more amazing, said jail Sgt. Dan Penland, is inmates will
actually consume or inhale those illegal, and often ingenious, items.

"I don't know how in the world they can bring it to their lips," said
Penland. "It's just awful."

At least once a week, corrections deputies will catch a whiff of smoke or
spot a prisoner hurriedly flushing the remains of a homemade cigarette butt
down the toilet. Homemade cigarettes and tobacco are the most common form
of contraband that correctional deputies find at the jail. "It's much more
of a problem than drugs, although they still try that, too," Penland said.
"They do everything they can to find something to smoke."

Jail officials don't keep track of how many prisoners smoke tobacco, but
Penland estimates the percentage is quite high. Beefing up the screening
process for inmates' mail and visitors has greatly reduced the amount of
contraband smuggled in over the years.

Stripped of any outside help, addicted prisoners who have nothing but spare
time spend their days scheming up ways to create booze and smokes.

Sauerkraut, lettuce leaves, coffee grounds and orange peels are smuggled
out of the cafeteria, dried and substituted for tobacco. "If it can be
dried and you can light it, they'll smoke it," Penland said, adding that
the homemade cigarettes have no narcotic effect. "It's just a placebo for
them."

Glossy-thin pages discreetly ripped from Bibles during church services
apparently make excellent rolling paper. Rotting fruit is stashed away and
stored until it becomes "prune-o," the name given to all liquor produced in
the pokey. Homemade booze isn't as common as cigarettes, mostly because of
the strong, foul odor that emanates when a batch is fermenting, Penland added.

"It smells terrible. It has quite a nasty odor," Penland said. Inmates who
get caught with homemade booze or cigarettes are put through an in-house
disciplinary system.

Possession-of-contraband cases are often referred to the Jackson County
District Attorney's Office for prosecution, Penland added.

Although corrections deputies often have difficulty proving which inmate
has smoked a cigarette, it's not hard to figure out who has consumed a
batch of prune-o, Penland said. A breathalyzer test is administered, and
Penland said most guilty parties have sky-high blood alcohol levels.

The amount of prune-o produced inside the jail dropped off several years
ago following an incident in the kitchen that sparked tighter security.

In an earlier interview, Lt. Jim Warren talked about a group of inmates
assigned to work in the kitchen who discovered a way to make dinner rolls
rise without using very much yeast. The extra yeast was used to make alcohol.

The inmates were discovered early Thanksgiving morning - passed out or
staggering drunk around the kitchen.