New Maricopa County Sheriff to close infamous TENT CITY

With the 2016 election, Joe Arpaio is out as Maricopa County Sheriff and Paul Penzone is in.

I was never a huge fan of Joe Arpaio. I thought he was corrupt, arrogant, and bigoted. I thought he was a self-aggrandizing showman. I am glad that he's no longer Maricopa County Sheriff.

New Sheriff Paul Penzone has announced that he is going to close Tent City.

What are your thoughts?

http://www.abc15.com/news/state/paul-penzone-to-shut-down-tent-city-after-decades-of-operation

Hooverville.
A tent city is a Hooverville.

It is good that carnival barker is gone.

Coupla questions: Is it safe to assume that the inmates were in for nonviolent crimes, and is there room in other facilities to house them? But, yeah, anything with Arpaio's fingerprints on it could use reexamining, IMO.

I believe the tent city was to detain illegals while they waited for the FEDs to come pick them up. That, in itself, is a good thing. Obama refused to pick up most of them saying their crimes were not great enough, which was bull shit.

What's wrong with living in tents?

While illegals were certainly housed there, that's not why Arpaio originally built the facility.

Then why?

To be "tough on crime".

You seriously didn't know this? It was all over the news when he started it.

No. Not even remotely at all.

What I heard is it was to house illegals until the feds came to get them. Yes, he did have a tough on crime schtick as well.

I mostly just tuned him out as he was dumb.

Seattle has many Hoovervilles.

Actually the tent city was supposed to be an avenue for an earlier release and they had to volunteer for the embarrassment of wearing pink prison stripes in public while they pick up trash and the like on an old-school style chain gang. I remember seeing something on it on the History Channel back before it became Pawn Stars and Ancient Aliens.

Something else I remember is Arpaio having one of his deputies steal some documents/evidence from the defendant's table during the trial, and then refused to hand it back over. I forget how that turned out, though. So, yeah, he was corrupt as fuck.

The fabric's thinner than your neural connections.

Joe may be heading to jail for contempt of court. Perhaps we should keep tent city to house him in when he goes to prison?

Because I would consider it cruel and unusual punishment.

Ah the good ol' days when SYFY was sci-fi, TLC was The Learning Chanel and History was The History Channel and it actually discussed history. I miss that.

I wonder how much less crime we'd have, and how many more productive citizens, if elected officials devoted as much energy to rehabilitation as they do to pandering by "gittin' tuff."

Joe's point was if it's good enough for our military when they are in the steaming hot sandbox overseas, criminals can deal with living in tents. Captain X brought up a good point about the History Channel - seems about the time I get home they have fucking American Pickers on.

If that was his point, then by that logic we can just randomly lob grenades into the yard every so often too ...

apples and oranges - trust me. I've lived & worked in Phoenix and the sandbox.

The only time you should live in a tent is when it's voluntary. Either you're camping or you've joined the military. In modern society we've established buildings as prisons and that's been the standard for a long, long time. To force them to live in tents is cruel and very unusual.

You've got to be kidding.

Nope.

Non standard housing is not cruel or "unusual"

You really need to explain the basis of your claim

When the majority of prisoners are in, you know, prison, it's most definitely unusual. When the majority of prisoners are not forced to live in upwards of 120 degree heat during the day and 40 degrees at night, that's also unusual and cruel. They should be placed in a standard prison, dot, period.

Dont expalin that to d3..

Dayton is either purposefully oversimplifying it, or he's just overly simple, you really can't tell sometimes. What he doesn't seem to realize is that we outlawed cruel and unusual punishment for a number of reasons, and is completely unaware the Eighth amendment exists, except as a sequence in a series of amendments. Arpaio is a scum sucking psychopath, who is a firm believer in extra punishment. It's not enough these men go to prison, they have to be duly punished over and over again, and he does it with glee. He is lawful evil.

I swear, I bet the first time Dayton watched The Shawshank Redemption, he was surprised as fuck when the Warden turned out to be the villain, and not the hero of the film. I would also bet that he probably hoped all to hell Andy Dufresne was caught and punished severely for escaping from his unjust imprisonment. Dayton strikes me as a lawful evil kind of guy, too, so it's no wonder he would support and defend Arpaio.