More than 20 officers and dogs raid Parklea Correctional Centre this week after a prisoner linked to Brothers 4 Life was believed to be using a phone to post to social media.

It was heralded as a key step in improving the health of inmates and prison workers.

But less than three months in, the ban on smoking in New South Wales (NSW) prisons has created a thriving black market and at least one brawl has broken out among inmates desperate for their ciggie fix.

Since smoking was banned in August, the price of a pack of cigarettes has sky-rocketed from $28 on the prison buy-ups scheme to A$300 (NZ$320) on the black market.

FAIRFAX NZ A prison worker said she had seen boxes of matches sell for A$90 (NZ$96).

Matches and papers, once sold through the buy-ups scheme for A$3 ($NZ3.20), now fetch up to A$90 (NZ$96).

Amid the desperation, some unconventional ingenuity has emerged from inmates, who are making homemade cigarettes and designing makeshift tools to probe for scraps of tobacco.

Inmates have begun soaking and cutting up nicotine patches, blending them with tea leaves and using pages from their state-issued Bibles to roll the toxic mix. Microwaves are being used to light cigarettes.

It's understood tea bags have since been removed from the buy-ups scheme in Long Bay prison.

One prisoner has detailed a brawl that broke out in August between inmates in Cooma prison who were fighting over old cigarette butts found in a hole in a second-level railing once used as an ashtray.

He said a group of men attached sticky tape to the end of a one-metre TV coaxial cord and were probing the 20-millimetre hole filled with old "bumpers" or cigarette butts.

"Word soon spread around the prison that there was loads of vintage tobacco ... The fight started after several inmates were heard arguing that they had disposed of bumpers down the hole [so] the bumpers should be divided equally," he said.

"Things only escalated when the inmate with the probing tool refused to share his invention."



SCAVENGING

The prisoner, whose identity has been withheld, said some inmates had armed themselves with plastic knives and were on their hands and knees digging out tobacco that had fallen into expansion joints in concrete.

Others were scavenging prison yards and furniture for butts, which now fetch A$4 (NZ$4.27) for 10.

"I don't smoke but I believe the government has shot itself in the foot by banning tobacco. Not only is tobacco used for its calming effect, it was used as the prison currency," he said.

"The government might not realise it but they have just handed over another multi-million dollar business to the criminals."

A prison worker said she had seen boxes of matches sell for A$90 (NZ$96) and packs of "dirty" cigarettes - made from cutting cigarettes down with other material to make them go four times as far - for A$300 (NZ$320).

The revelations followed a dawn raid at Parklea Correctional Centre on Thursday targeting contraband mobile phones, one of which had been used to access Instagram. An inmate used the social media site to boast about prison officers taking bribes to smuggle in tobacco, phones and drugs.

Professor Tony Butler, program head of the Justice Health Research Program at the Kirby Institute, said smoking bans create black markets and the possibility of riots, whilst having a questionable impact on reducing smoking.



RELAPSE

One overseas study found that 63 per cent of prisoners relapse on their first day of release, he said in an editorial in the Medical Journal of Australia.

In NSW juvenile prisons, 58 per cent of inmates have continued to smoke despite a ban.

"Black markets develop and violence and intimidation increases," Monash University law expert Anita Mackay wrote in one of several papers on the issue. "As one person said after their release from prison - 'I've seen someone nearly get killed over a cigarette'."

Prisoner advocate Brett Collins, from Justice Action, said the ban introduced a raft of new problems.

"People who have been previously smoking [the drug] ice are now injecting because they can't get access to a lighter," he said.

"There are people using heroin for the first time - people are using injecting drugs whereas previously they used cigarette smoke. Otherwise there's no way of controlling your mood."

An independent report on overcrowding in NSW prisons warned in May that smoking bans may tip angry, cramped prisoners over the edge and spark riots. A riot in Melbourne prison in June was believed to be sparked by a ban on smoking.

A Corrective Services spokeswoman said workers "deserve a workplace that is free of second hand smoke and all the health benefits that flow from that".

"The implementation of the new policy has been very successful in providing this," she said.