UK: £500,000 survey to ask prisoners if they like their life behind bars

Prison chiefs in the UK are going to spend £500,000 of precious tax money to find out how inmates feel and how well they're treated.

Prison chiefs are to spend almost half a million pounds quizzing prisoners about their quality of life.


Inmates at almost half of the country’s jails will be asked if they feel looked after and how well they get on with prison officers.

They will be questioned on their washing facilities, whether they are allowed enough time on the telephone and if they sleep well.

The Ministry of Justice is to press ahead with the survey, an annual exercise since 2002, despite massive cuts to the departmental budget. It is expected to cost taxpayers an astonishing £449,000 – a 6 per cent rise on the 2010 cost.

The news comes as Justice Secretary Kenneth Clarke faces the wrath of Tory right-wingers outraged at his plans to save cash by slashing the number of prison places by 3,000.

He wants greater use of community punishments in place of jail sentences.

His opponents say this will allow more offenders out on the streets and lead to more crime.

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This got me thinking about my favorite Sheriff - Sheriff Joe Arpaoi, Sheriff in Maricopa County, Arizona. A Sheriff who keeps getting elected year after year because of his common sense approach to his job - looking after his community and the taxes they pay. I posted a reminder of how he runs his jails. Can you imagine how the whiny UK prisoner would score him in their "quality of life" questionnaires? And I bet Joe wouldn't care much...

Sheriff Joe Arpaio created the “tent city jail” to save Arizona from spending tens of millions of dollars on another expensive prison complex.

He has jail meals down to 20 cents a serving and charges the inmates for them.

He banned smoking and pornographic magazines in the jails, and took away their weightlifting equipment and cut off all but “G” movies. He says:

“They're in jail to pay a debt to society not to build muscles so they can assault innocent people when they leave.”

He started chain gangs to use the inmates to do free work on county and city projects and save taxpayer's money

Then he started chain gangs for women so he wouldn ‘ t get sued for discrimination.

He took away cable TV until he found out there was a federal court order that required cable TV for jails. So he hooked up the cable TV again but only allows the Disney channel and the weather channel.

When asked why the weather channel, he replied: “So these morons will know how hot it's gonna be while they are working on my chain gangs.”

He cut off coffee because it has zero nutritional value and is therefore a waste of taxpayer money. When the inmates complained, he told them, “This isn't the Ritz/Carlton. If you don't like it, don't come back.”

He also bought the Newt Gingrich lecture series on US history that he pipes into the jails. When asked by a reporter if he had any lecture series by a Democrat, he replied that a democratic lecture series that actually tells the truth for a change would be welcome and that it might even explain why 95% of the inmates were in his jails in the first place.

With temperatures being even hotter than usual in Phoenix (116 degrees set a new record for June 2nd 2007), the Associated Press reported: About 2,000 inmates living in a barbed wire surrounded tent encampment at the Maricopa County Jail have been given permission to strip down to their government-issued pink boxer shorts.

On the Wednesday, hundreds of men wearing pink boxer shorts were overheard chatting in the tents, where temperatures reached 128 degrees.

“This is hell. It feels like we live in a furnace,” said Ernesto Gonzales, an inmate for 2 years with 10 more to go. “It's inhumane.”

Joe Arpaio, who makes his prisoners wear pink, and eat bologna sandwiches, is not one bit sympathetic. “Criminals should be punished for their crimes – not live in luxury until it's time for parole, only to go out and commit more crimes so they can come back in to live on taxpayers money and enjoy things many taxpayers can't afford to have for themselves.”


Joe Arpaoi

The same day he told all the inmates who were complaining of the heat in the tents: “It's between 120 to 130 degrees in Iraq and our soldiers are living in tents too, and they have to walk all day in the sun, wearing full battle gear and get shot at, and they have not committed any crimes, so shut your damned mouths!”
Way to go, Sheriff! If all prisons were like yours there would be a lot less crime and we would not be in the current position of running out of prison spaces.

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