This is penal reform!
Sheriff Joe Arpaio (in Arizona) who created the "tent city jail":
- 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 but 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's lecture series on videotape and pipes it into the jails.
- When asked by a reporter if he had any lecture series by a Democrat, he replied that a Democrat lecture series might explain why a lot of the inmates were in his jails in the first place.
More on the Arizona Sheriff:
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, an inmate who has lived in the tents for 1 1/2 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 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.