I got this email from Teresa who checked its validity on Snopes, and I think it’s awesome, so I’m reproducing it here:
TO THOSE OF YOU NOT FAMILIAR WITH JOE ARPAIO HE IS THE MARICOPA ARIZONA COUNTY SHERIFF AND HE KEEPS GETTING ELECTED OVER AND OVER.THIS IS ONE OF THE REASONS WHY:
Sheriff Joe Arpaio (in Arizona) who created the “tent city jail”:
More on the Arizona Sheriff:
- He has jail meals down to 40 cents a serving and charges the inmates for them.
- He stopped smoking and porno magazines in the jails. Took away their weights. Cut off all but “G” movies.
- He started chain gangs so the inmates could do free work on county and city projects.
- Then he started chain gangs for women so he wouldn’t get sued for discrimination.
- He took away cable TV until he found out there was a federal court order that required cable TV for jails. So he hooked up the cable TV again only let in the Disney channel and the weather channel.
- When asked why the weather channel he replied, so they will know how hot it’s gonna be while they are working on my chain gangs.
- He cut off coffee since it has zero nutritional value.
- When the inmates complained, he told them, “This isn’t the Ritz/Carlton. If you don’t like it, don’t come back.”
- He bought Newt Gingrich’ lecture series on videotape that he pipes into the jails.
- When asked by a reporter if he had any lecture series by a Democrat, he replied that a democratic lecture series might explain why a lot of the inmates were in his jails in the first place.
With temperatures being even hotter than usual in Phoenix (116 degrees just set a new record), the Associated Press reports: About 2,000 inmates living in a barbed-wire-surrounded tent encampment at the Maricopa County Jail have been given permission to strip down to their government-issued pink boxer shorts.
On Wednesday, hundreds of men wearing boxers were either curled up on their bunk beds or chatted in the tents, which reached 138 degrees inside the week before.
Many were also swathed in wet, pink towels as sweat collected on their chests and dripped down to their pink socks.
“It feels like we are in a furnace,” said James Zanzot, an inmate who has lived in the tents for 1? years. “It’s inhumane.”
Joe Arpaio, the tough-guy sheriff who created the tent city and long ago started making his prisoners wear pink, and eat bologna sandwiches, is not one bit sympathetic He said Wednesday that he told all of the inmates: “It’s 120 degrees in Iraq and our soldiers are living in tents too, and they have to wear full battle gear, but they didn’t commit any crimes, so shut your damned mouths!”
Way to go, Sheriff! Maybe if all prisons were like this one there would be a lot less crime and/or repeat offenders. Criminals should be punished for their crimes - not live in luxury until it’s time for their parole, only to go out and commit another crime so they can get back in to live on taxpayers money and enjoy things taxpayers can’t afford to have for themselves.
The only thing missing is the Tossed-Salad Man.
Ugh, Arpaio.
Apparently, his jails/chain-gangs are on the Amnesty International list, which I find amusing. The guy’s like a billion (78?) years old and keeps getting elected because he’s saving money, but he’s not at all interested in rehabilitation, just punishment. Just ugh.
Riiight… because rehabilitation is working so well other places.
I’m not sure why so many people believe prison ought to be club med.
He’s making them not want to come back, that’s rehabilitation enough. Other prisons just make you sit through a class while you can still get drugs, read whatever you want, watch TV, and play sports. Now I’m not saying other jails or prisons are comfy, but I have a feeling if they were all like Arpaio’s we’d have less repeat offenders.
What kind of prison is this? (in otherwords… what kind of criminals are housed here? Minimum security? Medium security? Maximum security?) I am curious more than anything.
I don’t think anyone can really support a motion to give inmates cable tv. However, Arpaio has gotten elected so many times by telling the voting people what they want to hear. The ‘tough-on-crime’ has not to my knowledge significantly decreased crime in Maricopa County (although I’d love to see data on this) as much as it has made the (voting) public feel better about criminals. The only data I found quickly and easily was the Phoenix crime data, that saw increases in crime from 2000-2002 and a decrese from 2002-2004 to approximately 2000 levels, depending on the type of crime. Although I will admit that other rehabilitation programs have not been effective, I think that the intended result of Arpaio’s system and any judicial system is to repress crime, which Arpaio doesn’t seem to be doing. The chain gangs serve primarily as punishment for the sake of punishment, to make those not in jail feel safe and/or righteous.
If anyone has good data on the crime rates in Maricopa county before and during Arpaio’s terms and/or comparisons to other similarly growing metropolitan areas, I’d love to see them.
A final comment about the Amnesty International issue. The Geneva Conventions allow countries to avoid extradition of prisoners to areas on that Amnesty list. I don’t know of other cases of this, but at least one Phoenix resident was detained in a European nation for some time because that country refused to extradite him for a minor offense. To quote my otherwise consistantly-Republican dad, “if he were in charge of a Middle Eastern country, we’d launch a military operation to liberate his people.”
Sorry for the length and the rant.
All I am going to say is “if you don’t want to do the time, don’t do the crime(s).”
More important than the short-term, raw crime rate data, I think, would be the “repeat offenders” data.
How many people ended up back in jail after serving time under Arpaio? Those are the numbers that are of interest to me.
Further, if ‘rehabilitation’ systems are not significantly better than ‘tough on crime’ systems, I’d prefer the latter.
Finally: I’m not sure I could possibly care any less about Amnesty International. They’ve proven recently that they’re little more than another anti-American soap-box hiding behind ‘human rights’ causes.
For all the questions you could ever have about Tent City
I disagree that repeat offender data is more important than crime data. First, if my car is stolen, I don’t think I care whether the guy who stole it had been caught before. Repeat offender data is useful to see how Tent City affects its inmates (and is a useful evaluative tool), but I think raw crime rate data is the most important evaluative measure.
In looking at crime rate data, its also important to look at how metro-Phoenix (which is most if not all of Maricopa county) has changed. Population has boomed of late, with the valley picking up about 10,000 net population a month. The areas Arpaio monitors are now overwhelmingly suburban, and the city is growing outwards in preplanned developments and master communities. If anything, crime rate should drop if only because the traditional citizens in high crime areas make up a smaller percentage of the area population.
While Tent City does serve as stringent punishment, prisons of this type serve a number of unintended psychological functions. Prisoners tend to network and learn new skills in prison, and skills learned or connections made under hardship are much more permanent. In addition, presence of an out-group (the guards) makes the in-group (the prisoners as a whole) much much stronger. When we finally do look at the repeat-offender data, its important to remember that prisoners tend to come out of prison better criminals than when they went in.
I don’t think raw crime data is at all important in evaluating the effectiveness of a prison program. It is effective, maybe, in evaluating the deterrant effects of the laws and punishments, but not really the prisons per se.
Raw crime-rate data is essentially worthless to the debate as to whether or not the tent-city is effective.
Ryne: I have to wonder what sort of a prison system WOULDN’T serve those roles.
Frankly, I’d be willing to trade the tent-city for 20 hour a day solitary confinement for all prisoners for the duration of their term. Yeah, it’ll cost more to house them, pump in a little AC/heat, and whatever… but I don’t want them to have social interaction, either.
How can the purpose of the prison system be unimportant in the evaluation of the prison program. Tent City should serve two purposes: (1) those in it should be detered from future crimes, and (2) those not in should be detered from committing crimes. If the crime rate does not go down, what is the point? As the post says, Way to go, Sheriff! Maybe if all prisons were like this one there would be a lot less crime and/or repeat offenders.” “Maybe if” isn’t good enough for these programs. The data is there, and if this program does not decrease crime, it’s just plain not working.
Pete, there doesn’t seem to be any prisons that avoid the problems I set out before. However, it wouldn’t necessarily be as difficult to implement as its made out to be (funding not withstanding). Another problem I didn’t mention is that if people are exposed to a disproportionate number of people who commit crimes, they will likely believe crime is more common and more acceptable than it is. A key facet to the Pete’ums and Ryne Prison Experience would be that the primary social interaction that prisoners would have would be with citizens who don’t commit crimes and reformed criminals. It would be tough, and maybe expensive, but it could work and make everyone a little safer.
Well, to my way of thinking you would need to evaluate (1) and (2) separately.
The first is served by repeat-offender data. The second could be looked at by raw crime rate (among other things), but I think you’d have a tough case to make (regardless of the actual rate) that a ClubFed prison is more deterrent than a Tent-City.
So, in short, the raw crime rate is not “unimportant”, per se, but fairly insignificant when comparing ClubFed to Tent-City.
If your way worked, Ryne, I’d be happy to spend the money on that. Maybe we could put a guy like Arpaio in charge of food/drink/amenities… cut the costs there, invest them elsewhere.