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Inside America's Toughest Jail - I Love It!


TO THOSE OF YOU NOT FAMILIAR WITH JOE ARPAIO, HE IS THE MARICOPA ARIZONA COUNTY SHERIFF AND HE KEEPS GETTING! ELECTED OVER AND OVER. HERE ARE SOME OF THE REASONS WHY:

HIGH above the Arizona desert, a pink neon sign flashes the word “vacancy” from a watch tower manned by armed guards. Surrounded by 25ft barbed wire fences, this is the welcome offered by America’s toughest jail — Tent City in Phoenix. Inside, nearly 1,000 prisoners live in army surplus tents, baking in temperatures of 122°F (50°C) in summer and freezing during winter. No matter how many criminals are locked up here, the vacancy sign is never turned off. Instead, if prisoner numbers increase, jail supremo Sheriff Joe Arpaio simply orders extra tents. He says: “I will build tents to house 100,000 people before I ever let anybody out of jail early. If I have to, I will put up tents from here to Mexico.”

Maricopa County was spending approx. $18 million dollars a year on stray animals, like cats and dogs. Sheriff Joe offered to take the department over, and the County Supervisors said okay. The animal shelters are now all staffed and operated by prisoners. They feed and care for the strays. Every animal in his care is taken out and walked twice daily. He now has prisoners who are experts in animal nutrition and behavior. They give great classes for anyone who'd like to adopt an animal. He has literally taken stray dogs off the street, given them to the care of prisoners, and had them place in dog shows. The best part? His budget for the entire department is now under $3 million.

I have long wondered when the rest of the country would take a look at the way he runs the jail system, and copy some of his ideas. He has a huge farm, donated to the county years ago, where inmates can work, and they grow most of their own fresh vegetables and food, doing all the work and harvesting by hand. He has a pretty good sized hog farm, which provides meat, and fertilizer. It fertilizes the Christmas tree nursery, where prisoners work, and you can buy a living Christmas tree for $6 - $8 for the Holidays, and plant it later.

Yup, he was reelected last year with 83% of the vote. Now he's in trouble with the ACLU again. He painted all his buses and vehicles with a mural, that has a special hot line phone number painted on it, where you can call and report suspected illegal aliens. Immigrations and Customs Enforcement wasn't doing enough in his eyes, so he had 40 deputies trained specifically for enforcing immigration laws, started up his hot line, and bought 4 new buses just for hauling folks back to the border. He's kind of a 'Git-R Dun' kind of 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, and 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's 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 the 2,000 inmates were given permission to strip down to their government-issued pink boxer shorts. On one extremely hot day, hundreds of men wearing boxers were either curled up on their bunk beds or chatted in the tents, which reached 138 degrees inside. 'It feels like we are in a furnace ,' Said James Zanzot, an inmate who has lived in the TENTS for 1 year. '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. About complaints of the heat 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.

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