Tent City Jail Word
Tougher on Criminals: Tent City Jail
Karen R. Ortiz
West Coast University
Joe Arpaio is known as the toughest sheriff in the west. He gets this name for the way he is tough on criminals in Maricopa Arizona. Being tougher on criminals when they go to jail may save the life of the criminal and its victim. 1993 Sheriff Joe Arpaio designed a camp that would be placed in the middle of the Arizona dessert, but it wasn’t an ordinary jail it was called Tent City Jail. Joe’s parents were legal immigrants from Naples they came through Ellis Island where his mother had given birth to him but died while doing so. His father owned a grocery store in Springfield, Massachusetts where Joe had worked and was raised by friends and family. Joe always wanted to be a police officer, he joined the Army and then became a patrolman in Washington D.C. Joe was a narcotics agent in Turkey and in Mexico and later retired in Arizona. Joe ran for sheriff in Arizona and won thus beginning his new career. Joe is a sheriff elected by the people in Maricopa County and is on his on his fifth four-year term. The main job of sheriff is to run the jails and at the time the county needed a new facility for the over population of the old jail or they would have to let some prisoners go free. The county had declined the financing for the new jail and that did not sit well with Joe Arpaio. Joe said that while he is sheriff no criminal will be released before they do their full stint in jail. He went got a consignment of Army surplus tents and surrounded it with barbed wire. Tent City Jail looks like a military camp in the dessert with thick canvas sleep quarters spreading out in the remote area of Arizona (Hill, 1999). Arpaio put up more
tents, until Tent City Jail held twenty-five hundred inmates, and stuck a neon “VACANCY” sign on a guard tower (Finnegan, 2009). Joe has four thousand employees three thousand volunteer posse members, an overworked
Karen R. Ortiz
West Coast University
Joe Arpaio is known as the toughest sheriff in the west. He gets this name for the way he is tough on criminals in Maricopa Arizona. Being tougher on criminals when they go to jail may save the life of the criminal and its victim. 1993 Sheriff Joe Arpaio designed a camp that would be placed in the middle of the Arizona dessert, but it wasn’t an ordinary jail it was called Tent City Jail. Joe’s parents were legal immigrants from Naples they came through Ellis Island where his mother had given birth to him but died while doing so. His father owned a grocery store in Springfield, Massachusetts where Joe had worked and was raised by friends and family. Joe always wanted to be a police officer, he joined the Army and then became a patrolman in Washington D.C. Joe was a narcotics agent in Turkey and in Mexico and later retired in Arizona. Joe ran for sheriff in Arizona and won thus beginning his new career. Joe is a sheriff elected by the people in Maricopa County and is on his on his fifth four-year term. The main job of sheriff is to run the jails and at the time the county needed a new facility for the over population of the old jail or they would have to let some prisoners go free. The county had declined the financing for the new jail and that did not sit well with Joe Arpaio. Joe said that while he is sheriff no criminal will be released before they do their full stint in jail. He went got a consignment of Army surplus tents and surrounded it with barbed wire. Tent City Jail looks like a military camp in the dessert with thick canvas sleep quarters spreading out in the remote area of Arizona (Hill, 1999). Arpaio put up more
tents, until Tent City Jail held twenty-five hundred inmates, and stuck a neon “VACANCY” sign on a guard tower (Finnegan, 2009). Joe has four thousand employees three thousand volunteer posse members, an overworked