A prisoners' rights group is fuming over Quebec plans to ban smoking by jail inmates either in their cells or outside, starting next February. 

Public Security Ministry officials announced the new rules on Tuesday.

It's the no-smoking-outside rule that angers prisoners' rights advocates.

"We do not understand why, because everyone in Quebec can smoke outside, and we don't know why the prisoners can't do that," said the president of Quebec's Prisoners' Rights Committee, Jean-Claude Bernheim.

Jail guards and other personnel are permitted to smoke outside, while prisoners won't be allowed to, and that sets a double standard, Bernheim said.

He said it will create undue tension between guards and inmates, and it will spark more illegal trafficking in jails.

Bernheim said prisoners could be enticed to quit smoking while behind bars, but that would mean providing drugs and counselling.

"We need to make a lot of resources, and they need money for that, and the government doesn't want to put money in prisons."

Bernheim said in general there are too few programs for inmates, and smoking is a way for them to kill time.
 
Even if prisoners are forced to butt out in February, Bernheim said, it won't have the effect of curing their smoking habit. Prisoners in the province's jails are generally in for an average of just three months.

The Correctional Service of Canada banned smoking in federal prisons in January 2005.