An article was forwarded to me about a US Sheriff Joe Arpaio who has taken a radically different approach to jails including the reintroduction of chain gangs, emptying the jails and making inmates live in tent cities and the elimination of what he views as perks …

We took away coffee, that saved $150,000 a year. Why do you need coffee in jail?" says Arpaio, patrolling the dusty, barren grounds. "Switched to bologna sandwiches, that saved half a million dollars a year."

Arpaio makes inmates pay for their meals, which some say are worse than those for the guard dogs. Canines eat $1.10 worth of food a day, the inmate 90 cents, the sheriff says. "I’m very proud of that too."

As the CNN article and the wikipedia entry show, his methods are not without detractors. As someone who watched Karla Homolka, one of Canada’s sickest serial killers, ‘thrive’ in jail while getting a degree, I have to wonder whether he is on to something.

As he says, maybe if it is really awful, they won’t come back. But fingerprinting after a traffic ticket? A little much.