Originally Posted by mmarsh

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In the US, the basis of our legal system is INNOCENT until proven GUILTY. That means for *some* of the prisoners they haven't been convicted of any crime yet, though the system in Arizona is already treating them as if they were convicted. Thats neither right, nor smart.

I agree.

For the rest, as Gilbert and Sullivan once wrote "Let the Punishment fit the crime". I am not saying they should live the life of luxury, but depriving people of coffee, and other little things that have NO consequence on the prison is cruel, especially when those inmates are serving minor crimes like DUI, Drunk and Disorderly, or unpaid parking tickets. Remember this is COUNTY jail, not State or Federal Prison.

I don't agree, I think a short sharp exposure to conditions like this probably does more to talk people out of repeat offending than 30 days in state holiday camp with all amenities paid.

There is a safety concern too. Prisons are very stressful places, you push people too hard and they will snap; hurt others or themselves. This has even happened to inmates with no prior violent tendencies. Some people cannot deal with the stress of incarceration. So by running a pissant county jail like its Stalag 19 the sheriff is putting other inmates, guards, and workers at risk. And he has already been sued because of it.

I don't disagree however life is full of stress and to be perfectly frank the reason a lot of these people are in prison in the first place is because they snapped and hurt others so to be absolutely truthful I would much sooner have them snapping and hurting each other in prison than out on the street doing it and lets face it if you cannot handle the stress of incarceration then don't get arrested.

What is the sheriff trying to prove? Not to come back to jail? If you've ever seen a jail, you don't need to grind in the heel to prove that. Remember these inmates are people who couldn't pay bail, are awaiting trial, and those convicted of minor offences.

For you and I this would be absolutely true which is why the vast majority of us think before we do stupid things that will land us in prison however there are those who don't seem to have the capacity I know people that have refused Christmas release because the prison food was better than what he would get at home, I know people on their 14th DWI who don't care that every one after the 2nd has a mandatory sentence starting at 6 months (reduced to 2 months for good behavior).
It is clear that for a good number of the repeat offenders prison isn't some place they don't want to be therefore I have no issues with the conditions they spend there time in.

Heres the deal. Alot of Jails no longer serve coffee, generally as a cost cutting issue and as stated it has no nutrional value. Alot of jails have stopped smoking. Some times state mandated, sometimes because inmates being inmates some have sued about being exposed to second hand smoke. In theory it also reduces medical costs.

Wieghts well inmates have an odd tendency to use hard heavy objects as blundgeoning devices against each other and officers.

Porno most of the prisons in the two states I've worked in bann it.

As far as the inmates being pre-trial or county sentenced inmates or unable to pay bail. Yeah in County Jail thats gonna make up a good portion of your jail population. But you also have the sentenced inmates awaiting transfer to the Department of Corrections.

You need to remember that all the "really" bad guys all go thru some "pissant" County Jail before they hit a prison yard. County Jails especially one the size of Maricopa Co. have all the problems you'll find in a prison.

That being said. I think Sheriff Joe does play to the cameras and the media a bit much. But hey he's a politician and thats what they do.

^^^I can't argue with that ^^^

I am a guy from AZ that has done his time in the jail of reference (incarcerated, not as a guard).

Lest I be judged, here's a very breif summary of my story to preface my comments on the sheriff and his jail operations:

Growing up, I was the consumate "poor, white skinny kid." Literally. Thrift store clothes, I maybe weighed 100 pounds (none of it muscle), was a complete dork, and we were so poor we didn't own a car. Dad was a drunk, mom worked 2 jobs. We couldn't even afford to buy me a sack of marbles, which was the popular thing back then - so I broke open a game that had round balls and called them marbles, which is what made me a target.

This school was in South Phoenix - the middle of gang territory (back then it was the 9th Street Gang and the Garfield Gang we avoided). Once I made myself a target, there was no going back. The gangs were relentless in my beatings - always several members kicking the crap out of the poor, skinny white boy because he was... poor, skinny, and white.

I would come home 3 out of every 5 days beaten. Then my dad, a career Marine that detested weakness, would beat on me some more for being beaten. As the gangs saw the new injuries, that made them laugh and they beat me harder and more often, which made dad all the more infuriated, and the sick cycle continued.

I was 9 years old the first time I tried to cut my wrists. I was too weak to even do that right.

One day I had had enough, and I resigned myself to a life where I'd never be beaten on again - by anyone. Dad died when I was 14, I quit school and lied about my age to get full-time employment (I'd been working 2 years already, selling candy door-to-door 6 hours a night, 6 nights a week). I knew the military was my chance to get even, so that's the route I took, wanting to play hero and no longer be a victim. I got my GED and I signed at 17 and started Basic Training 17 days after my 18th birthday. Mom was very proud, as we were a military family; and ironically enough, with her career Navy and dad career Marine, I had been born at an Air Force base and enlisted Army Infantry, lol. God has a sense of humor, I kid you not.

The Army did indeed teach me everything I wanted to know, and I soaked it all up. Especially self-defense. I began taking Krav Maga and, being the smallest guy there, took more beatings until I learned the art of hurting someone BEFORE they could hurt me. My confidence swelled, and I became a well-respected squad leader. I learned to drink heavily, to work hard, and to fight honorably. I took no further beatings, though I gave plenty. Because I was lean (read: skinny), I bulked up nicely.

When I ETS'd, my wife and I divorced, I went back to AZ. And I became a hunter. Of men.

I detested all those that even looked Hispanic, though I'd met and worked (and fought) with some great guys in the Army that happened to be Hispanic. Something about returning to AZ triggered the rage I'd had buried inside since the beatings in school from the "spics" (sic). I would be polite and kind one minute, then I'd have you on the ground pummeling you the next.

It was a sad, dark world I lived in those days. The memories still ring clear. God brought me out of those days, but not before the damage had been done.

I am not excusing myself, here. There is no excuse for anger, resentment, and targeting people because of their ethnicity. None. My rage and bitterness had a stranglehold on me because that's what I allowed to happen - what I wanted, even. I was too (physically) small to induce pain without the rage, so rage is what I clung to. As my dad used to say, "There is no greater consequence then that of mistakes under the veil of anger." And my freedom was the consequence paid, just as he'd predicted through his drunken stupor, administering my beatings for being weak.

I found myself in an out of jail. DUIs. Assaults. Resisting Arrest. Assault on a Law Enforcement Officer. Probation Violation. Drunk and Disorderly.
Domestic Violence. Nothing major, mind you: No felonies or anything like that.

Just enough to meet Sheriff Joe Arpaio and his staff at the Maricopa County Jail on a dozen or more occassions.

[Ironically enough (remember that sense of humor God has?), my second wife went on to become law enforcement, for the Maricopa County Sheriff's Office, and that eventually ended our marriage.]

Perhaps I do not need to say this, perhaps I do: I am a different man now. I no longer hunt people based on their skin color, assigning them as targets based on how I was treated in my youth. Everyone is my equal, because God showed me that He created everyone as equal, and though the son will bear penance for the father's sins, my role in life was not to be the bondsman of such release and injustice (or justice). I grew very weary very quickly of being in and out of jail, of holding to hurt and anger and spite. I have finally found my freedom - literally, emotionally, and spiritually. I still get angry, but I do not hate. I still hold emotional stances, but I do not despise. I still try and succeed, while other times I try and fail.

Let everyone here know this: While my past cannot be erased, my present is the causation of my own accord - more accuarately, that of God's loving kindness over me. I do not have a bigoted bone in my body, though I do hold contempt for bullies and gangs of any ethnic group. I learn anew every day that love and kindness trumps spite and bitterness in every single instance.

All that to say this: When I speak of Joe and his policies and jails, I do so from the experience of a man who has been there and seen it other-than on paper. I lived it for a good portion of my civilian life, though, by the grace of God, I live it no longer. Release is but a tool waiting to be employed. I've lived a very hard life in my 37 years, most of which I am not proud of, most of which I do not talk about.

But if you want to know about Arpaio and his policies from a no-longer biased source that has experienced them first hand, I'm your huckleberry.

Let me start by saying this: "Tent City" is not the poisonous prison camp some crybabies make it out to be. Is it hot? Yes. But I lived in worse when I was a soldier. And it gets cold. But I lived in worse when I was a soldier.

Most inmates actually prefer the tents, as then you can at least walk around, breathe real air, take showers when you'd like to, and converse with any other inmate. It's not pleasant, and it damn sure ain't paradise by any stretch of the imagination; but as far as jail goes, it's a damn sight better than being locked away in a cell like a rabid animal.

You have no idea what the sun on your skin feels like until you've served 2 months without ever even seeing the sun, much less feeling it. Going to the tents kept many I came to know in that place sane - myself included. Men are not designed to be held in concrete boxes.

If you want to know WHY jail riots occur, there's your answer: It is our animal instinct to seek freedom and distinction. Put us in a concrete cell, eventually our animal nature will surface. And hell hath no fury then that of an animal trapped and fighting for sanity.

So the tents are a good thing. The food sucks, the officers are high school rejects that any of us could kick the crap out of, and they are incompetent to a T. The last one I spoke with wasa Marine Sniper serving on a SEaL Team when he earned his Purple Heart and Silver Star from a mission that was classified.

Of course, I was busy shooting down the Red Baron at the time he was in...

Now, while the tents are good, county lockup is DEPLORABLE!!!!oneone111exlamationmarkone!11

The cells are nothing more than cattle pens, designed for 5 people, but holding 40. Literally no place to sit, much less sleep. They are ice cold or steamy hot. Even if there was a place to sleep, sleep is impossible.

The guards completely ignore any pleas for the injured. I have personally witnessed guards standing outside a cell, watching a man suffer a severe asthma attack that threw him into convulsions so strong that he actually broke his hand tightening his fist so hard. He was denied any help, any medication, any compassion. He was arrested for peeing on a dumpster because he didn't want to drive home drunk.

I've met literally dozens that lived in these conditions for DAYS, awaiting transfer. Some owed no penalty to society other than losing their job and being behind on child support.

There are no clocks there in lockup, so time creeps by at an amazingly slow, agonizing pace. There is NOTHING -- NONE, no Bible or even a food wrapper -- to read. We are afforded nothing but 2 sack lunches a day, which are hardly edible (Joe figured that 3 meals a day was too much money, so we only eat twice, 1 sandwich and a piece of fruit, maybe a roll and some peanut butter). These sack lunches -- yes, they really are green bolgna -- make a man's bowels wretch, so the cell of 40 people stinks like death (and I've smelled death) as all 40 either throw up or crap out what they've ingested.

Deplorable. Inhumane. Many, many people get turned to being a career criminal in the county system - if you're to be treated as an animal, might as well act like one. The chance for revenge far outweighs the fear of coming back. That is Joe's doing. And Joe will rot in hell's fires for what he's done that's turned otherwise good men into savage revenge seekers. A DUI isn't worth the insanity, a life lost, a father and son and brother destroyed forever through one experience.

Even the toughest break there.

The more he breaks, the more media he recieves. He knows this. So he humiliates us in the spotlight with his pink handcuffs (that cost twice as much for the powder coating process), the pink underclothes (that you won't get for a week, staying in filthy clothes the entire time, but that also cost more because they have to be dyed), the caging and humiliation that MAKES repeat offenders.

I myself suffered that mindset.

I went 4 full days in the same set of clothes - no toothbrush, no clean clothes, no shower, no nothing. They wouldn't even tell me what I was charged with, just to "shut [my] mouth and don't complain or we'll "lose" [my] paperwork and [you] can spend another 4 days here."

That was when I, personally, lost my mind and I broke.

Gone were any cares of getting out. I wanted to stay in. If they let me out, I'd just commit a crime to get back in. I would buck the system, I would see these guards again, and I'd kill them. I will hurt them just as bad as they hurt me, toiling with me, tempting me. All I wanted was to brush my teeth. I wanted to not give up hope, to stop crying. I just wanted to know what I was doing there, these 18-year old punks with badges laughing at a once proud soldier that drank too much because it's the only way to control the memories the VA wants me medicated for to the point of DUH.

I would either kill them while I was there, or I'd get out and come back and kill them then. As Kipling said, it's not the timing of revenge that matters to a seeker of such, but the act itself; violent men are patient men (paraphrased).

I did eventually get over that feeling, of course. But many do not. I later found out that in my drunken haze I'd taken a pot shot at a police officer trying to cool a situation. My fist totally missed him, but that was my charge. Charges were dropped, and I was released "without condition." I almost felt remorse that I was leaving and others were going on their 5th day "on the inside." But, truth be told, I was a broken man and just wanted to go home.

I hated them for breaking me, for mocking me. And still, deep down inside, I knew I wanted to come back, to get my one chance to rob a guard of what they'd stolen from me. Didn't matter which one, as they all took part in the reverie. Male. female. Young. Old. Like in combat, I'd lost any care but for the act of wanting to kill, and that was the greatest insult of all they could have dealt me. And these guards were fine dealers.

That was 10 years ago, yet the memories are as vivid as the last cigarette I smoked only 5 minutes ago.

Those of you who think that Sheriff Joe is the good guy are off your rockers in ignorance. The man is a malicious, hateful, spiteful politician that ruins lives for the sake of his own hubris. He breaks the very laws he enacts and turns it around so others will applaud the inhumane and contemptable treatment of those inmates he was once duty-bound to reform, rather than re-commit. He does it on purpose. It's good for business.

There is a special place in hell for him, and unless he repents, he'll be duty-bound to that office. God knows he's put too many through hell himself. His hypocrisy knows no bounds, his evil no end.

I know too many that lost it in those cells. Men that did nothing more than get drunk or lose their jobs and fall behind on child support, men who made one bad decision they'll never recover from.

That's Joe Arpaio. The career criminals cannot be reformed, they will never change. Those that aren't career criminals have yet to sit a week in the 4th Avenue Jail in Phoenix, Arizona.

That's a better man than I am... if I were getting beat up by a gang EVERY SINGLE DAY, I do believe I would have shot them. All of them. Just not something I could accept.

Originally Posted by major liability

That's a better man than I am... if I were getting beat up by a gang EVERY SINGLE DAY, I do believe I would have shot them. All of them. Just not something I could accept.

Dude, I was 10 and 11.

We don't carry .45's at that age (well, today some do). I'm 37 now, and I do carry a .45, and should a gang decide to target me, yeah, it'd be lights out for them.

But I was defenseless at that time.

Now... You're damn right I'd shoot every one of them. In the gut. Why show quarter where none is offered? Gangs are the scourge of this planet, the predators of the weak - and those of us that are predators in return will win every time.

Until they lock us up.

Damn, 10? I feel real bad for ya... That would certainly put a lot of pent up rage in a person.