Not to defend Sheriff Joe, but at least regarding the incarceration rate and the crime rate, there are many variables in play and it would be hard to accurately measure any claim of effectiveness or lack of effectiveness. The Phoenix metro area’s population has been increasing dramatically in the past 10-15 years and particularly in the past 8 years. With any sizeable population increase comes an inevitable increase in the crime rate.
And regarding the incarceration rate, since 2005 with the election of County Attorney Andy Thomas (equivalent of district attorney), the prosecution policies have changed dramatically, requiring more plea offers to mandate prison or jail terms for more offenses than before under a “get tough on crime” kind of approach. So, for at least these two variables, it would be virtually impossible to single out Sheriff Joe’s contribution to either of these two for good or bad.
Most places if you lock a bunch of criminals up, you can at least figure your crime rate will go down. Maricopa County has managed the difficult task of having its incarceration and crime rates both go up. My best guess would be that they’re locking up the wrong people.
Which, from what I’ve heard, is probably true. Joe Arpaio isn’t interested in investigating serious crimes that might take weeks to get results. He just wants to run around the city doing “sweeps” and arresting as many people in a day as he can to run up his numbers. Most of them are arrested for petty crimes but he throws them in their pink underwear and puts them in a tent and on a chain gang while they await their trial. They get time served and sue the county.
Everyone who is arrested in the county is taken to the 4th Avenue jails, booked, and within 48 hours they are taken before a commissioner for their initial appearance. It is at this time that release conditions (bond, pretrial monitoring, or simply own recognizance) are set. If they are kept in jail following the IA, that’s not Sheriff Joe’s call.
Also, the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office by far investigates a slim minority of crimes in the valley. The majority of the police work is done by the city police agencies.
The way things work up by me jails are not just for suspects waiting for trial. Criminals convicted of certain crimes that have sentences of less than two years serve their sentences at the county jail. No idea if it is the same in AZ.
I think there were some good intentions, but not enough common sense, so…no, I am not a fan of Joe Arpaio. And actually hope he gets incarcerated under his system someday.
IIRC, the chain gangs are fully volunteers from the inmate population. The choice is to stay in your cell for 23 hours a day, or work on the chain gang.
I agree with the general sentiment, though. Joe doesn’t run a prison. It is a county jail. Feeding people rotten bologna for 11 cents a day is ridiculous for convicted murderers, let alone some dumbass who got caught driving on a suspended license.
In Arizona, the maximum term for someone serving a jail term is one year. For anything more, a prison term is required (though someone can serve a few month stint in prison as well).
And that’s one of the big reasons why prison in Arizona is actually a lot more pleasant, or at least less unpleasant, than being in Sheriff Joe’s jails. Particularly tent city on a cold and rainy or hot and humid day. At least there’s air conditioning in prison.
I always thought Joe Arpaio was symptomatic of what is wrong with America. He’s a poster boy for public education in the United States. I teach classes at Colorado’s largest prison, and I know several of the corrections officers personally – none of them have an ounce of respect for this brain-damaged cowboy.
For unknown reasons, I watched his reality show last week. I cannoty understand who agreed to pay for these set-ups! Ok, so you’re going to trick people into being in a “fashion show”, then arrest them. Do you really need a huge, fully furnished building, with a dozen actors and several dozen deputies? They let this whole charade go on for about 15 minutes, when all they had to do was trick them into entering the building, and arrest them. But no, they had them try on the clothes, meet the “designer”, get them into prisoner costumes, do a fashion show, have them come out for an encore, THEN arrest them.
I have no horse in this race but I can appreciate his cost savings measures. If he’s a jerk about it I have no way of seeing that from my corner of the world.
He isn’t saving any costs. He’s implementing policies that save a few thousand dollars initially but then result in millions of dollars in restitution.
The editors of the weekly BTW were arrested recently for daring to be a continuous thorn on the sheriff side (the local buzz is that it is unlikely that sheriff Joe was an innocent bystander when the prosecutor ordered their arrests) The editors were released as soon as many noticed that that stunt could lose even more money to the county (the charges were so asinine that even the county fired the prosecutor and dropped all charges). It is clear this will result in yet another millionaire lawsuit.
As the sheriff was reelected, it is clear that many do not care on cutting off their noses to spite their faces, but it seems that the coming budget crunch will finally drive many to realize that any savings the sheriff brings can not hide the real costs.