Oh, there's so much MORE to know about Sheriff Joe Arpaio of Arizona!Maricopa County which was spending approx. $18 million dollars a year on stray animals. 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 placed in dog shows.
The best part? His budget for the entire department is now under $3 million.
The prisoners get the benefit of about $0.28 an hour for working, but most would work for free, just to be out of their cells for the day. Most of his budget is for utilities, building maintenance, etc. He pays the prisoners out of the fees collected for adopted animals.
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 pig 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. He was re-elected 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 hotline 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 hotline, and bought 4 new buses just for hauling folks back to the border.
He's kind of a "Git-it Dun" sort of Sheriff!
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!
In the heat, about 2,000 Inmates living in a barbed-wire-urrounded tent encampment At The Maricopa County Jail Have Been Given Permission To Strip Down To Their Government-Issued Pink Boxer Shorts. "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 is not one bit sympathetic
He said that 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."
This is NOT cruelty. It is severe, yes, but it has been earned and it works. Few go back. It reminds me of military prisons in the UK. A series on TV some years ago revealed that the re-offending rate under their tough regime was a tiny 3%!
