Arizone Convicts

[Clocker]

TOO HOT FOR ARIZONA CONVICTS!!

It's even hotter than usual in Phoenix, the Associated Press reports:

About 2,000 inmates living in a barbed-wire-surrounded tent encampment
at the Maricopa County Jail have been given permission to strip down to
their government-issued pink boxer shorts.

On Wednesday, hundreds of men wearing boxers were either curled up on
their bunk beds or chatted in the tents, which reached 138 degrees inside
the week before. Many were also swathed in wet, pink towels as sweat
collected on their chests and dripped down to their pink socks.

"It feels like you are in a furnace," said James Zanzo't, an inmate who has
lived in the tents for 1 1/2 years. "It's inhumane."

Joe Arpaio, the tough-guy sheriff who created the tent city and long ago
started making his prisoners wear pink, is not sympathetic. He said
Wednesday that he told the inmates: "It's 120 degrees in Iraq and the
soldiers are living in tents and they didn't commit any crimes, so shut
your mouths."

KIND OF PUTS THINGS IN PERSPECTIVE DOESN'T IT?

 

[CougTek]

Some famous personality once said (or wrote) that the we can judge the level of a society by the way it treats its prisonners. It was better phrased, but you get the idea. Doesn't surprise me to hear that coming from the U.S.

 

[Mercutio]

The "pink underwear sheriff" has made national news for being tougher on inmates than anyone else. He's actually famous for it.

 

[Buck]

LOL

 

[Primate]

Someone thinks one sheriff is mistreating prisoners so of course he comes to the conclusion that it must mean all people in the US do so and are jerks because of it.

 

[blakerwry]

im glad he knows how to treat em coug. I'm all for tougher punishment of repeat offenders.

 

[CougTek]

Primitive thinking.

Do you think it will re-abilitate them? Being someone with strong criminal tendancies (officially, strong temptations only), I can tell you that the hardest life is for me, the nastiest I become. I believe those guys are just the same. Making their lifes more miserable than it has already been won't make them better persons. Wether they someday be released or not isn't revelant. Changing people for the better is important no matter where they spend they lives.

 

[jtr1962]

I don't see any need to torture or humiliate them either. If they can't be rehabilited just dump them on an island and let them fend for themselves. Long-term incarceration is a waste of money.

 

[Howell]

Making their lifes more miserable than it has already been won't make them better persons.

But it sure will discourage them from commiting crimes in that state again. It provides an external motivation. Many people require external motivation because they do not have the experience or sometimes intelligence to discover the consequences on their own.

 

[Fushigi]

Do you think it will re-abilitate them?

I thought modern prisons existed purely to get offenders off the street. Lately I haven't heard of any honest rehabilitation attempts. Maybe it's due to prisons being outsourced to for-profit corporations, maybe it's gov't budget cuts, maybe no ones cares. Dunno, but it doesn't seem like ex-cons are truly better people after their experiences. Maybe they go straight to avoid going back to jail, but that's not the same as being rehabilitated.

 

[Mercutio]

I don't see any need to torture or humiliate them either. If they can't be rehabilited just dump them on an island and let them fend for themselves. Long-term incarceration is a waste of money.

That was tried. We ended up with Aussies. A group of people with an international reputations for being simultaneously as loud and obnoxious as Americans and also so laid back that the whole country is practically comatose.

Hm.

Know of any other big islands?

 

[jtr1962]

ROTFLMAO! :lol: :mrgrn: :lol:

Thanks, Merc. I needed a good laugh after watching the depressing 9/11 ceremonies yesterday.

 

[i]

Know of any other big islands?

How about Greenland?

 

[Mercutio]

Maybe Great Britain or Japan.

 

[Clocker]

I don't see any need to torture or humiliate them either. If they can't be rehabilited just dump them on an island and let them fend for themselves. Long-term incarceration is a waste of money.

I disagree. I think we should employ them ALL! I have the sudden urge to take some lessons....whether I need them or not.

C

 

[CougTek]

Employment of the convicts, in respectable conditions (ie - not rock hammering with guardians using whips) is a very good idea IMO. It gives them the opportunity to continue to participate to the society development and give them the feeling (at least to some of them) that they serve to something.

In any case, it's better than vegetating into a cell.

P.S. Using them as shooting targets isn't what I consider humanitary conditions either.

 

[Clocker]

They would be just holding the targets. THe job does have it's risks though... :mrgrn:

C