Giving credit where credit is due, I applaud Sheriff Joe Arpaio for speaking out against Governor Ducey’s proposal–after cutting higher education to ribbons and leaving public education in peril–to BOOST spending by $52 million on yet another private prison in Arizona.
Sheriff Arpaio, according to the Republic, says that’s a waste of money and suggested the state house extra inmates in county jails.
He argues that private prisons are both costly and force the state to cede control over inmate rehabilitation to a private firm whose bottom line is to make a profit, not rehabilitate inmates.
The Republic quotes the sheriff saying, “I’m sure they (private-prisons operators) are happy and are ‘more the merrier’ when more inmates come into their facilities…I would be happy if no one came back to jail, but I don’t think a private prison would be happy if no one came back.”
For a change, Sheriff Joe is right! Thanks for speaking out.
I’m happy to see some lawmakers also questioning the Republican governor’s skewed priorities and I hope they say no to this ridiculous request and demand those funds go to education. We’re a LEADER in the nation on private prisons, while our children go to schools ranked 47th or 48th in the nation.
Anyone who can’t see how wrong that is shouldn’t be in office
Everything is very open with a precise explanation of the challenges.
It was really informative. Your site is very useful. Many thanks for sharing!
Sorry, Jana, but county jails are not set up to house long-term prisoners. By law, a person sentenced to less than one year of incarceration CAN be housed in a county jail. But for persons serving longer terms, there are many factors that are different between prisons and jails, including visitation, education programs, treatment services, work-related job training, etc., and the county jails are not able to provide these services. The jails are designed for pre-trial detainees who are expected for the most part to be housed only during the process of conviction and sentencing. Why do you think that some defendants are willing to take a plea bargain instead of fighting their charges? Some of them simply want to get away from the county jail so they can move to the prison where they can “settle in” for the long-term nature of their sentence and take advantage of some of the more expanded job, program, visitation, property, medical and other features of a state prison that are not even contemplated by a county jail system for pre-trial detainees. Joe Arpaio is just as guilty of attempting to insure his empire by filling every single one of his beds as are the private prison operators. If Arpaio filled all his empty beds with state sentenced prisoners, don’t you think HE would be asking taxpayers to build another jail?
Now we can claim we are most responsible for the “dumbing down” of America.
If we educate our youth we won’t have to build more prisons. These uneducated youth have nothing to look forward to. Free bed and meals in a prison looks pretty good to them. Stop this nonsense and put our money where it belongs in education.