Crime and Punishment
Sick of all the criminal rights? Sick of all the luxury prison lives and the pussy footing around? Believe that criminals are in jail to be punished, not live the life of Riley with privileges that many on the outside can’t afford?
Me too which is why I’m reproducing this email verbatim. Not sure where the original came from but it says pass it on and I’m more than happy to do that… Big Time!
Joe Arpaio, Maricopa County Sheriff
For those of you not familiar with Joe Arpaio, he is the Maricopa County (Arizona) Sheriff and he keeps getting elected over and over again.
These are some of the reasons why:
Sheriff Joe Arpaio created the “tent city jail” to save Arizona from spending tens of millions of dollars on another expensive prison complex.
He has jail meals down to 20 cents a serving and charges the inmates for them.
He banned smoking and pornographic magazines in the jails, and took away their weightlifting equipment and cut off all but “G” movies. He says:
They’re in jail to pay a debt to society not to build muscles so they can assault innocent people when they leave.
He started chain gangs to use the inmates to do free work on county and city projects and save taxpayer’s money.
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 allows the Disney channel and the weather channel.
When asked why the weather channel, he replied:
So these morons will know how hot it’s gonna be while they are working on my chain gangs.
He cut off coffee because it has zero nutritional value and is therefore a waste of taxpayer money. When the inmates complained, he told them,
This isn’t the Ritz/Carlton. If you don’t like it, don’t come back.
He also bought the Newt Gingrich lecture series on US history 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 that actually tells the truth for a change would be welcome and that it might even explain why 95% 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 for June 2nd 2007), the Associated Press reported:
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 the Wednesday, hundreds of men wearing pink boxer shorts were overheard chatting in the tents, where temperatures reached 128 degrees.
“This is hell. It feels like we live in a furnace,” said Ernesto Gonzales, an inmate for 2 years with 10 more to go. “It’s inhumane”.
Joe Arpaio, who makes his prisoners wear pink, and eat bologna sandwiches, is not one bit sympathetic.
Criminals should be punished for their crimes - not live in luxury until it’s time for parole, only to go out and commit more crimes so they can come back in to live on taxpayers money and enjoy things many taxpayers can’t afford to have for themselves.
The same day he told all the inmates who were complaining of the heat in the tents:
It’s between 120 to 130 degrees in Iraq and our soldiers are living in tents too, and they have to walk all day in the sun, wearing full battle gear and get shot at, and they have not committed any crimes, so shut your damned mouths!
Way to go, Sheriff! If all prisons were like yours there would be a lot less crime and we would not be in the current position of running out of prison spaces.
If you agree, pass this on.
Joe was just re-elected as Sheriff in Maricopa County, Arizona
Personally, I think Sheriff Joe should also ban the Disney Channel. There’s far too much violence in those cartoons.
JackP responds:
Posted: June 11th, 2008 at 4:22 pm →
Yikes! I think that’s going a bit far…
Don’t get me wrong, I:
Don’t think prison should be a ’soft’ option
Think that people are in prison to be punished
Don’t think that people in prison should have luxuries that others can’t necessarily afford
Think that people in prison should do useful work to minimise (or ideally entirely offset) the cost of keeping them in prison
But I am still kind of in agreement on the ‘inhumane’ thing. Anyone that forces people to watch Newt Gingrich has to be classed as inhumane… plus I also think that while prison should be about punishment, it should also be about rehabilitation: get people to consider the impact of their crimes on others, and equip them with the skills to perform a useful function in society when they get out again.
Don’t forget Amnesty International’s concerns about ill-treatment.
Don’t forget some of the negative sides of the scheme (taken from Wikipedia):
Charles Agster, a mentally handicapped man who was killed in the County Jail shortly after being arrested on misdemeanor loitering charges
Death of Scott Norberg … evidence suggests detention officers shocked Norberg several times with a stun-gun. According to an investigation by Amnesty International, Norberg was already handcuffed and face down when officers dragged him from his cell and placed him in a restraint chair with a towel covering his face
Brian Crenshaw was a blind inmate allegedly beaten into a coma by guards working under Arpaio … who later died in hospital
Richard Post was a paraplegic inmate arrested in 1996 for possession of marijuana and criminal trespass. Post was placed in a restraint chair by guards and his neck was broken in the process. The event, caught on video, shows guards smiling and laughing while Post is being injured
I won’t be passing it on.
I think the barbarous, inhumane treatment meted out to prisoner’s in Joe’s regime is not one we should be celebrating. I don’t think we should just unquestioningly swallow the spin dished out by the Sheriff’s office (as above).
Jaybee responds:
Posted: June 11th, 2008 at 5:10 pm →
Double yikes. I hadn’t seen any of the information on the Amnesty site. My first assumption was that you were complaining about the use of chain gangs and pink boxers, both of which I think are a darn good idea.
The problem with all of this is that people go too far. The treatment listed in the post is reasonable, designed to put people off wanting to re-offend in order to get a cushy life at no cost. OK, I’m not sure I agree with no protection from the heat but I do agree with the no frills approach and saving taxpayer money by not providing luxuries.
Rehabilitation is fine but you tend to get the do-gooders pushing everything in completely the opposite direction to Joe and you end up with H.M.P. Ritz.
It needs a balance and that’s not what we have at the moment.
I’d be interested to see the stats on re-offending from that jail.
Neil Oliver responds:
Posted: June 12th, 2008 at 9:32 am →
it seems to me that people forget prison should serve 3 purposes.
1. Punish the Guilty: by the removal of liberties that the rest of us take for granted.
2. Protect the innocent/Public: by keeping criminals off the streets
3. Facillitate rehabilitation.
Recent exposes of prisons in the former soviet block, South America and parts of Africa show just how bad conditions can get, of course things can get taken to extremes but look where we are today (partly) through lack of corporal punishment in the home and schools.
On a similar topic I don’t understand why people seeking political asylum are unhappy about living in an ex army camp while waiting to be processed. After all the conditions they are trying to escape are much worse aren’t they and with the threat of imprisonment or worse.
Last thing 42 days detention for terrorist suspects…. with councils now using anti terrorists survellance laws to catch people who let their dogs crap on the footpath how long would it be before people who complain about public transport just get carted off to do their time.
Adult Ühler responds:
Posted: July 3rd, 2008 at 11:34 am →
As someone reading from the UK, it is really interesting to read this. What you are saying is so different from the dribs and drabs I have picked up from American prisons. I think over here prison is not such a haven.
Mike Cherim responds:
Posted: July 14th, 2008 at 2:39 pm →
I’d hate it if I were there, but I have to say it sounds like a great program. First the savings for the taxpayers, and then the pure motivation of it. Sounds like quite the deterrent. I must say, though, that the Disney channel will make killers out of the most peace-loving among us so I’m not sure that’s a good idea
Ginny Scorup responds:
Posted: July 25th, 2008 at 7:31 am →
I AGREE!!! Way to go, Sheriff! If all prisons were like yours there would be a lot less crime and we would not be in the current position of running out of prison spaces!