What's really happening in Sheriff Joe Arpaio's jail

By Michael Lockwood
web posted March 26, 2002

When asked their opinion of Sheriff Joe Arpaio, most critics
dutifully repeat the tired old cliché - he is a publicity hound, and
he has violated inmates' rights resulting in their deaths on
occasion. Yet when asked to expound, most people cannot
explain in legal terms how inmates' rights are being violated.

The truth is that only a very few inmates in Arpaio's jails have
been seriously harmed while fighting law enforcement who were
trying to restrain them. In fact, these numbers are comparable to
numbers in other county jails around the country. Department of
Justice statistics show that there are over 40 accident related
inmate deaths per year in jails across the country. Furthermore,
as Maricopa County's Risk Management pointed out, sheriffs
are frequently the target of lawsuits, and the number of lawsuits
against Arpaio is typical, as indicated by the fact that insurance
premiums have not risen.

Unfortunately, there are people with different philosophical
beliefs than Arpaio who would rather coddle prisoners by giving
them Hustler magazine and cable television rather than take the
necessary steps to discourage them from returning to their
criminal behavior that landed them in jail. Even more shocking is
the fact that in many jails and prisons rather than finding methods
to discourage criminal behavior, our tax dollars are spent
providing criminals with a means to obtain a college degree while
in prison. Is it fair that inmates are rewarded for criminal acts
while there are honest citizens in our society who cannot even
afford to go to college and who are working two jobs to make
ends meet?

Because Arpaio's critics have not been able to defeat him in the
polls or find any wrongdoing, they resort to blatant distortions of
the truth and falsely accuse Arpaio of lying. A favorite tactic used
by them is to exploit incidents where inmates who resisted
confinement got hurt, portraying them as innocent victims
oppressed by the law.

The most frequently touted example of oppression in Arpaio's
jail is the death of Scott Norberg, who died while resisting police
officers. Norberg was arrested for chasing after two young girls
in Mesa in order to kill them. High on methamphetamine, he
attacked the police officers who were trying to restrain him,
resulting in his death. Norberg's parents, who had disowned him
years ago, filed a lawsuit against the Sheriff's Office. Arpaio
defended his officers' actions and wanted to go to trial, but the
insurance company insisted on settling. The Justice Department
and the FBI conducted an extensive investigation and came up
with nothing. Yet this case is typical of those cited constantly by
Arpaio's critics as evidence of abuse by the Sheriff's Office.

Arpaio's critics contend that the Sheriff's Office's choice of
restraint methods are inhumane. However, as usual, these
accusations are baloney. Organizations like Amnesty
International decry the use of restraint chairs, since occasionally
an inmate who insists on struggling hurts or kills himself in the
process. However, even international standards, which are
generally more prohibitive than U.S. laws addressing restraint
methods, have approved restraint chairs as legitimate uses of
restraint when strictly necessary.

Amnesty International also claims that the Office's use of stun
guns is inhumane. However, they conveniently fail to point out
that the stun guns were given to the Sheriff's Office by the
Department of Justice in a grant program, and both the
Department of Justice and the National Sheriff's Association
approve of their use. Furthermore, the stun guns are only to be
used by law enforcement in self-defense. It is ironic how these
so-called compassionate critics say nothing when a guard uses a
regular gun in self-defense, killing an attacking inmate, but
scream injustice if a guard uses a stun gun in self-defense, briefly
stunning the inmate. It's not too difficult to guess which weapon
the inmates prefer used.

Arpaio's Office has been accused of cruelty for "hogtying"
inmates, a method of restraint that puts the inmates in a painful
position. However, hogtying is not allowed in Arpaio's Office. Of
course, Arpaio's critics are so eager to accuse Arpaio of
oppression that when another local police force in town brought
over an inmate it had hogtied, Arpaio's critics took it as yet
another opportunity to falsely accuse the Sheriff.

Vague accusations that the Sheriff's Office is "torturing" inmates
are embarrassingly incorrect. Even Amnesty International has
acknowledged that torture means causing an inmate an extreme
level of pain which is repeated in a regular fashion or used for a
particular purpose, such as extracting a confession. Torture
simply does not include responding to and restraining violent
inmates.

In response to accusations that his deputies were mistreating
inmates, Arpaio installed webcams in the jail so the public could
see for themselves. Detractors criticized his webcams as
invasions of the right to privacy of pretrial detainees. Yet courts
have consistently held that pretrial detainees have a lesser degree
of privacy than regular citizens. Pretrial detainees have limited
rights, similar to convicted criminals. Funny how these same
critics are silent regarding TV police shows that frequently show
the faces of people being arrested, and newspaper articles that
print the photographs of suspects.

These critics would prefer to have a Pre-Trial Services Agency
similar to the one in Pima County, which assesses "risk" levels of
arrestees and releases many of them based on this analysis,
instead of detaining them overnight. Because Arpaio's Office
decides not to immediately release many of the suspects it
arrests, the Sheriff's Office is labeled "cruel." But to many
members of the public, and to law enforcement, there is a
legitimate concern that immediately releasing a man who has
violently (but for the first time!) beat up his wife might not be the
wisest choice, especially considering he may still be high on
drugs. Perhaps it would be safer for the public and his wife to
have him sit overnight in jail and cool off.

So far the courts have generally agreed with Arpaio that he has
not violated any inmates rights. The Supreme Court agreed with
him that inmates do not have a right to pornography. So maybe
Arpaio's critics would be better off protesting the real inhumane
treatment of prisoners in other parts of the world. According to
Amnesty International's own information, in several countries
many pretrial detainees are held for long periods of time before
being released. In Venezuela recently, 1,531 unsentenced
inmates were held for more than three years in confinement.
Inmate deaths are also much worse in other countries. Ten
percent of inmates in two Burundi prisons died during the first
four months of 1998.

Accusations that Arpaio is a publicity hound are misplaced.
Arpaio generates publicity because he implements innovative
programs that save taxpayers money and deter criminal
behavior. If he was a passive sheriff who simply coddled inmates
and gave them their cable television and pornography, so there
weren't any complaints, he wouldn't make news. And why
should the inmates be entitled to free cable, when there are
honest citizens who cannot afford cable? The media's
accusations that he seeks out publicity are ironic, considering it is
the media who is always calling Arpaio, not the other way
around.

Arpaio's critics ignore or downplay the good he has done. His
drug prevention and treatment program has been a success; a
recidivism study found that only eight to ten percent of the 2000
men and women who graduated from it have returned, vastly
better than the nation's 60-70 per cent recidivism rate. He
started the only high school in the nation for inmates.

He has saved taxpayers millions. His volunteer posse of 3200 is
the biggest in the nation and saves taxpayers the cost of paying
deputies, costing nothing except for training posse members.
Arpaio expanded the posse's duties from typical search and
rescue work to rounding up deadbeat parents and rescuing
abused animals. He began sheltering abused animals at his jail
while their owners awaited trial, and has his female inmates
caring for the animals. In 2000, United Animal Nations, a
national animal advocacy group, awarded its Animals' Choice
Award to Arpaio for his efforts to stop animal cruelty. He has
started parenting programs for inmates. His Friday night "smart
tents" are available for teachers, parents, and kids to come sleep
in overnight to see what being locked up in jail is all about.
Children get to see firsthand what it is like to be handcuffed and
locked up. The inmates tell them about the dangers of committing
crimes.

 Inmate meals cost 22 cents each, the cheapest in the nation, and
 are served only twice a day. Most other jails spend $4-5 dollars
 per day on inmate meals. His detractors claim that Arpaio's
 figure is exaggerated, and that the actual cost is closer to $1.49
 per meal, but they have sneakily reached this figure by including
 hidden costs like transportation and electricity. His tents cost
 taxpayers $100,000, a fraction of the $70 million it would have
 cost to build another jail. His detractors complain that putting
 inmates in hot tents (which contain swamp coolers) is inhumane,
 but the inmates say it beats living in one room with 100 other
 men. When inmates smuggled out 50,000 pairs of underwear, a
 loss of $40,000 a year, he began providing them with pink
 underwear to prevent future theft. Sales of the now popular pink
 underwear have helped pay for costs associated with the posse.

Arpaio's chain gangs are voluntary for the inmates, and save
taxpayers money by having the inmates perform work for the
county instead of paying regular workers. Contrary to criticism
that the chain gang is inhumane, inmates surveyed have said they
like working on the chain gang because it gets them outside and
gives them something to do. Arpaio's female chain gang is the
only female chain gang in the nation. Every Thursday Arpaio lets
women volunteer for gravesite duty, which involves digging
graves and burying indigents who have died. As the women hear
how the indigents died, of drug abuse or other various sad
situations, it makes an impact on them. Some of them even pray.
The female inmates also paint curbs, remove graffiti, and pick up
litter, saving taxpayers upwards of $500,000 over three years.

Critics of Arpaio claim that his tough tactics are not working. Yet
the only evidence they can point to that supports this is an
Arizona State University study that was improperly conducted.
Another tactic frequently used by Arpaio's opponents to
discredit him is to find partisan opponents working within his
administration, or disgruntled former employees, who have their
own agendas and are eager to say whatever it takes to destroy
Arpaio's credibility. This is not unusual; within any governmental
agency there are going to be naysayers willing to criticize the guy
at the top. And for every ex-posse member discovered who
complains that the posse is unorganized or costs more than
Arpaio says it does, there are twenty posse members who refute
the accusations. But hey, for people who have already made up
their mind about Arpaio, it's best not to let the facts get in the
way of their opinion.

Whatever happened to outrage over crime? It is being replaced
with political correctness guised under the important sounding
and widely misused mantra of "rights." But the plain fact is, clever
word plays don't help the politically correct when their life is
being threatened by one of society's degenerates: just like the
rest of us, they call the police to defend their rights, not the
ACLU to defend their attacker's rights.

This is Michael Lockwood's (mlockwood@email.com) first
contribution to Enter Stage Right.

Enter Stage Right - http://www.enterstageright.com