Republican presidential candidate Gov. Mitt Romney has appointed Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio as the honorary chair of his Arizona campaign. The controversial sheriff is known for among other things being the first in the world to put juvenile offenders on “chain gangs”, to house prisoners in a “Tent City” in 110 degree weather, require prisoners to wear pink underwear, and to reduce meal costs to inmates to only 15 cents a day.
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Thanks for highlighting this. My recent reading would suggest that Mr Arpaio’s tactics would reinforce criminality rather than deter it. Do you know of any stats on this?
I don’t know of any stats on that particular county but if I recall correctly the stats are that inmates who are offered some type of rehabilitation have a better chance at being productive citizens.
I’ve got to be honest… after reading the Wiki page about him, I like some of his programs and I admire his thinking outside the box in an attempt to do the right thing in spite of financial and other constraints.
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That, and he’s a fellow Napoletano.
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But, he’s clearly gone over the line a number of times, and not by just a little bit. He sounds like a smart pick for Romney for the primary, but more than a bit too wingnut for the general election. I wonder what Arizonans from across the state think of Arpaio.
that fans, or mist blowers, or something were provided to the inmates in the tent cities, but they kept shorting them out. Rather than keep keep up an endless cycle the Sheriff just stopped replacing them after they were broken.