Texas officials to study ‘Tent City’
SAN ANTONIO - A handful of Bexar County officials will visit Maricopa County on Thursday to see how a controversial sheriff forces jail inmates to wear pink underwear, eat 15-cent meals, work on chain gangs and live without air conditioning in Korean War-era tents that can heat up past 120 degrees in the summer. Commissioners Lyle Larson and Tommy Adkisson will meet with Sheriff Joe Arpaio, the self-styled “Toughest Sheriff in America,” to see if some of his get-tough measures - particularly the tent jails - could be successfully imported to Bexar County.
So, how long before prisoners in Bexar County are wearing pink and sleeping outside in tents? And how long before the Sheriff there begins believing his own press clippings and becomes a world-class media whore a la Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio?
Then again, could this possibly have anything to do with the impending election and the fact that Adkisson just might benefit from thumping his chest and playing the “I’m tough on crime” card? Hmm….
Arpaio arguably has made an impact here in Maricopa County, but at what cost? Do the people of Maricopa County benefit by enabling the treatment of criminals in the way that Sheriff Arpaio does? Yes, his unconventional (and some might say inhumane) methods have attracted a good deal of attention, but do they do anything more than attract a good deal of media attention?
I’m not smart enough to be able to know whether or not housing criminals in tents in the Arizona heat really has an impact on crime…or whether it will do so in Bexar County, Texas. It IS a great way to make political candidates look as if they’re tough on crime, though…and when it’s all about winning an election, isn’t that really what matters?
