You can’t have it both ways. First you say Arpaio’s jails are so horrifying that people never want to go back, so they offer something that regular jails don’t. Now you’re saying that they’re not any worse than regular jails.
Pretty much OK if you happen to be a bear. You get the bare necessities.
No, I’m not. They’re worse, but in ways that are relatively minor compared to what we already do to our arrested inmates.
To understand the difference, and why Arpaio’s techniques are effective, it’s necessary to understand the difference in the way people react to hardship versus annoyance (or irritation, humiliation or aggravation).
What we do now is impose hardship on our inmates. But people become inured to hardship. I think most people would agree that a debilitating illness is worse than smashing your thumb with a hammer, but look at the different reactions they bring in the people they happen to. The person with the much more serious illness simply accepts it and does what they can to deal with it, while the reaction to the person you smashed his thumb with the hammer is to yell and curse and jump about in anger, and you can bet that the next time he’s putting hammer to nail he’ll be a damn sight more careful not to hit smash his thumb with that hammer.
Jail and prison time is something that inmates become accustomed to. In some quarters the ability to do time is even considered a sign of manliness: “Don’t do the crime if you can’t do the time,” etc. Some people become so accustomed to prison life that they don’t want to leave. The term for this is “institutionalized.”
But people don’t become accustomed to constant irritations and humiliations and disgusting food and so forth. No one is saying “If you can’t eat moldy bread sandwiches, listen to Frank Sinatra all day and wear pink underwear, then don’t do the crime.” Even hard-core criminals know that’s too much to ask. 
So yes, what we normally do to inmates is much worse than the additional tactics Arpaio employs to discourage return visits, but it’s a type of worse analogous to a serious illness or other major life difficulty. They accept it, deal with it, and life goes on. What Arpaio does is use the irritants and humiliations and unpleasantries he employs to make jail life too unpleasant and off-putting for people to become inured to. They want out and they want to stay out.
A pretty good plan if you ask me. Too bad we don’t do more of it.
- You wouldn’t call being fed rotting food “hardship”?
- Is there an ounce of empirical evidence to support your theory?
Is it against board rules to hope that, someday, SA gets picked up by the cops for a crime someone else committed, and then held in [del]prison[/del] jail while awaiting a trial that keeps being moved back indefinitely, eating food that could very well kill him, in temperatures that would cook a ham, all while fearing being beaten by the guards?
I’m just trying to figure out which horrible person Starving Artist will defend next.
Mike Vick? No, definitely not.
Bernie Madoff? Closer, but he’s been off the radar for a while. Also, he’s Jewish.
Fransisco Franco? Maybe, but he’s been dead for decades. Also, not American.
Hmm…
No. But it’s not very nice.
You can narrow it down - he only supports people he thinks are politically conservative.
Well, he’d probably be looking forward to the ass-rape part.
And so would NoLittlePlans, who no doubt will be along any moment to support him on this Arpaio thing. 
Just as soon as **Starkers **signs off, in fact.
Actually, most of the death and ruined or destroyed lives I’ve been most aware of in my life have come about as the result of liberal indulgence (drugs, fatherless children) or liberal do-gooderism (housing projects, police hand-tying and protectorship/shielding of high-crime groups, and criminal/murderer releasement).
So according to your view the next most likely villain I’ll champion is The Great American Liberal!
Not much chance of that though.
After reading his posts here, I’m OK with that…
(ETA - responding to Really Not’s post.)
And so, inevitably, we reach the conclusion of a Starving Artist thread: it’s all the liberals’ fault. As inexplicable as the tides, and as worthwhile to reason with.
I can tell you exactly what would happen. Being a conservative and therefore blessed with a reality-based outlook and philosophy, I would realize that shit happens and I had happened to fall victim to it. I would be very worried and very pissed off. I would be hoping against hope that I would be found not guilty. And I would be hating my life while I was in jail.
What I wouldn’t be doing is exaggerating my plight like some silly whingebag who fears death from sandwiches nobody has died from, or being cooked by temperatures in a jail that nobody has been cooked from. Trial dates and guard beatings could be a problem, but like I’ve said at least thrice now, those are problems endemic to all prison/jail systems of large and many small sizes and hardly unique to Arpaio’s jail. In fact, going by things that have happened in jurisdictions I’ve been aware of in my life his jail seems safer than most.
To paraphrase the Master, its not his ignorance that frightens me, its all the stuff he knows that just ain’t true.
Ya think?
Uh huh.
No, it has to be an actual person, not an abstraction.
ETA: And someone you really do admire, like Joe Paterno or Joe Arpaio or Donald Trump.
You have presented no evidence that Arpaio’s methods are effective at reducing recidisvism rates, so just stop.
It has ever been thus!
Oh, you guys try. And often you have the right idea. The trouble is, you invariably fuck up the implementation.
It isn’t enough to feed the hungry. What starts out as a way to feed the hungry ends up with demands for nanny-state government.
It isn’t enough to want an end to sexual repression and hang-ups and an unhealthy view of sex, you have to champion bed-hopping and no need for marriage and entire generations of latchkey kids being raised without guidance or values by one harried and immature parent.
It isn’t enough to work to end racism and segregation and to strive to bring the people of different races together in harmony. No, you have to defend every single negative outgrowth that arises from minority communities - outgrowths which further divide the races and make integration and education and employment opportunities even more difficult - and you angrily assail as racist anyone who points it out.
It isn’t enough to be aware that substandard performance in school leads to low self-esteem and to think that perhaps the answer lies in exploring ways to help kids learn more effectively. No, your answer is to pass kids from one grade to the next whether they learned anything or not. This is supposed to prevent harm to their self-esteem…until they go out into the real world and can’t hack even a burger-flipping job because they can’t spell or do basic math or carry on an intelligent conversation with their boss. Boy, do they have great self-esteem then!
And it isn’t enough to realize that perhaps convicts would benefit from attempts at rehabilitation to assist them in making a living legally once they’re released from prison. No, you have to work to get them released as soon as possible whether they’re rehabilitated or not and whether they’ve got a ton of violent crimes on their rap sheets or not, and then when people get raped and robbed and killed by these assholes and people start to buy guns and enact three strikes laws to protect themselves from the people your careless and indulgent sexual practices and inadequate educational systems and revolving-door prison systems have created, your response is to call for more gun control and an end to three-strikes laws. :smack:
Sigh…
I could go on and on, but you get the point. If only you guys had governors…you know, something akin to common sense…to hold you back and guide you, the world probably would be a better place. But it seems that when it comes to liberalism, common sense just ain’t that common.
“An unhealthy view of sex”, preaches Mr. Cardboard Tube. 
You’re truly the gift that keeps on giving, Starkers.
The word “strawman” doesn’t come close to describing post #258. We need a new word. “Super-mega-happy-strawman #1!” Maybe not.
Hmm, I seem to be becoming the very thing I was complaining about.