Crime Now Pays

The old adage “Crime doesn’t pay” obviously no longer applies to California. It appears that Governor Moonbeam would rather spend our tax dollars on a bullet train than apply them toward confining lawbreakers. The Attitude of the courts used to be, “We sentence them, you figure out what to do with them.” It appears that is no longer the case. The courts want those they sentence to be housed in the equivalent of the Hilton rather than Motel 6. Are the jails crowded? Probably. There are a lot of crooks and criminals in California, some aren’t even in the legislature.

When you commit a crime, you are remanded to a penal institution. The key word here being penal. A wrongdoer must suffer a penalty. The people in prison have all committed a felony. Lesser crimes don’t get prison time. That is the penalty they must pay for crimes ranging from drug dealing to armed robbery and even murder. In every instance there were victims that were at the very least inconvenienced. Is it not reasonable that those committing the crimes should also be inconvenienced? In some countries, they simply throw a prisoner in a hole without even considering how many other prisoners are confined there.  As long as they can shoehorn another one in, they’re good.We are more civilized than that, but do we really need to assure convicts a cushy room with three gourmet meals a day — plus snacks and cigarettes and television? Sure makes honest homeless people look like chumps.

“America’s Toughest Sheriff," Joe Arpaio of Maricopa County, Arizona has no overcrowding problem in his facilities. Each prisoner is assured a spot in an non-airconditioned tent and a fresh set of pink underwear. When he gets too many prisoners, he just buys another tent. Here’s a clip from the Maricopa County Sheriff’s web site:

Arpaio has between 7500 - 10,000 inmates in his jail system. In August, 1993, he started the nation’s largest Tent City for convicted inmates. Two thousand convicted men and women serve their sentences in a canvas incarceration compound. It is a remarkable success story that has attracted the attention of government officials, presidential candidates, and media worldwide.

Of equal success and notoriety are his chain gangs, which contribute thousands of dollars of free labor to the community. The male chain gang, and the world’s first-ever female and juvenile chain gangs, clean streets, paint over graffiti, and bury the indigent in the county cemetery.

Also impressive are the Sheriff’s get tough policies. For example, he banned smoking, coffee, movies, pornographic magazines, and unrestricted TV in all jails. He has the cheapest meals in the U.S. too. The average meal costs between 15 and 40 cents, and inmates are fed only twice daily, to cut the labor costs of meal delivery. He even stopped serving them salt and pepper to save tax payers $20,000 a year.

Another program Arpaio is very well known for is the pink underwear he makes all inmates wear. Years ago, when the Sheriff learned that inmates were stealing jailhouse white boxers, Arpaio had all inmate underwear dyed pink for better inventory control. The same is true for the Sheriff’s handcuffs. When they started disappearing, he ordered pink handcuffs as a replacement.

Another web site quotes Arpaio on the quality of the food:  …Other prisons in the State [Arizona] and around the nation will average a dollar to a buck and a half per meal.  But Arpaio says he doesn't do it to save money...he does cause "the prisoners deserve to be punished."

Maybe the courts figure that if they require the state to release a bunch of prisoners, they won’t be inclined to arrest so many criminals and the court case load will drop. Unfortunately that logic does nothing to reduce the number of crimes committed. It just means we will have more criminals in our neighborhoods that have learned a very valuable lesson — crime pays.

Instead of turning felons lose on an unsuspecting — we are no longer allowed to suspect, that would be profiling — public, Brown could take just a few of those dollars he is wasting on the high-speed rail and invest in some tents at Big 5 Sporting goods. He might even be able to go in with Maricopa County, Arizona and get a discount on some pink underwear and handcuffs. Are you listening, Jerry?