In Defense of Flogging by Peter Moskos Page A

triple murder; the latter received twenty-two hundred years for rape, kidnapping, and robbery. A judge, on an appeal by Mr. Anderson, added nine thousand years to his sentence (a second appeal knocked off five hundred years). Mr. Anderson’s release is set for the year 12744. Clearly, this is absurd.
    If you think that “getting tough on crime” works, that if only we added enough years and made incarceration bad enough, then nobody would risk committing crimes, please meet Sheriff Joe Arpaio of Maricopa County, Arizona. Sheriff Joe, who likes to be known as “America’s Toughest Sheriff,” is proud of the harsh conditions in his jail: striped uniforms, pink underwear, chain gangs, sleeping in tents, no coffee, and cheap food. Arpaio proudly says his feedings cost just twenty-two cents per person per meal, twice a day. But it’s not just about frugality. Arpaio says prisoners deserve to be
punished: “I don’t want criminals to be happy and comfortable in my jail. If you don’t want to be there, don’t commit the crime.” Fair enough—until we consider that 70 percent of his inmates are technically innocent “pretrial detainees.” When jail is used for pretrial detention, it is supposed to hold, not punish. But perhaps more important than Arpaio’s inability to understand legal nuances is that his much-touted “get tough” policies don’t work, at least not in any way that deters crime or prevents recidivism.
    A few years back Arpaio commissioned a study to examine and highlight his successes. Two recruited professors looked at people sentenced and released from his jail before and after Sheriff Joe was elected. But their findings don’t support Arpaio. They found no difference in the recidivism between offenders released before Sheriff Joe took over and those released a few years later, after he “got tough” and introduced his unique brand of hospitality. Nor has Arpaio deterred other people from getting into trouble. Since he took over, the jail’s population has more than doubled, to ten thousand prisoners.
    Honestly, though, the recidivism rate probably means little to Arpaio and his numerous fans
(Arpaio has won by a wide margin every election since 1993). For these people the issue is less about facts and figures than a deep-rooted desire to punish criminals. But it would be nice if those who advocated get-tough approaches would at least be honest and say their policies are more about vengeance than preventing crime. In an era when ignoring data and being contradicted by so-called “libs” is a rite of passage for conservative politicians, Sheriff Joe and his supporters simply discount any opponents as politically biased.
    In the study of Arpaio’s effectiveness, the Arizona professors started with the premise that for get-tough policies to deter, inmates must actually dislike the policies. And although Arpaio’s gimmicks may garner contempt from liberals and applause from conservatives, in truth they may matter very little. The professors interviewed hundreds of inmates about their attitudes toward Arpaio’s jail. Inmates disliked being incarcerated, but beyond that, Arpaio’s policies garnered little hatred.
    Regardless of anything happening in jail, a third of the inmates believed they’d be back no matter what. The real-life conditions that led them to crime in the first place—mentioned most were alcohol,
drugs, inability to pay child support, and not having a driver’s license needed to get to work—weren’t going to change upon their release. Among other inmates with more long-term plans to stay out of jail, the most complained-about aspects of incarceration were hardly unique to Maricopa County: lack of recreation, cold food, group quarters, and cigarette bans. It doesn’t matter what color the underwear is—jail is jail. The “toughness” Arpaio has tried to