Drugs Shaming that Addiction Away
posted by on April 15 at 12:27 PM
Pink underwear for male inmates, chain gangs for teens, and meals at less than 20 cents per plate weren’t enough for Arizona Sheriff Joe Arpaio. Now women convicted of drug-law violations get special shirts.
Women inmates in Maricopa County have been on chain gangs since 1996. Now, 15 of them will wear T-shirts that say “I was a drug addict” as they clean trash from a Phoenix street on Monday.The Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office says the move is designed to discourage young people from using drugs.
Sheriff Joe Arpaio says the women have such sad stories about what drugs have done to their lives and that they want to help others make better choices than they did.
By the sound of this article, women aren’t required to wear the shirts. They’re doing it because they want to. Uh huh.
The Sheriff’s department reportedly claimed the women would want to talk about their former addictions, but inmates interviewed by a television news crew called it a publicity stunt. One of the women said, “It’s because it’s an election years and he’s down in the polls, and he needs something to bolster his votes and campaign contributions.” I’m sure the accommodations in Joe’s hotel will be first-class for her.
I gotta admit, the whole shame-your-way-to-redemption logic baffles me. Guilt and shame are the staples of the Catholic Church, specializing in sexual guilt, and look how well it’s worked for priests and alters boys. By that math, these shamed ladies will all get out of jail and swallow a meth lab.
Thanks to tipper Nicole. Via TalkLeft.
...soon to be an ironic logo at your nearest hot topic.
Sheriff Joe is a populist moron. He touts saving the taxpayers money by removing salt and pepper from the jail and serving expired bologna to inmates, saving a few cents a day, but exposes the taxpayer to repeated multimillon dollar civil suits for failing to provide basic healthcare to inmates, negligent deaths of prisoners, etc. Trying to subpeona the web records of the Phoenix New Times to see who was reading their exposes of him may be the lowlight of his recent idiocy.
Not to mention that neglect of basic needs has turned his 'Tent City' prison into a hotbed of drug resistant staph and TB infections. I wouldn't visit Phoenix if you paid me, and Sheriff Joe is a prime example of why.
No one with even the slightest degree of expertise in the field of either chemical dependence or criminal justice would agree with this moron that "shame" is a stop on the path to redemption.
Not to mention the roles of guilt and shame in the cycle of addiction...
Reading about this fascist always drives my blood pressure up.
Fuck Sheriff Joe, and fuck the assholes in Phoenix who keep reelecting his sorry Nazi ass. Even law enforcement professionals from neighboring jurisdictions don't support him.
It's not nice to say, but I hope he gets cancer and dies a slow agonizing death.
Really.
Nothing new here--those in power have always claimed that the poor are that way because of their moral failings, not because the deck is stacked against them.
I'm sure the recidivism rate for these t-shirt wearers won't move an iota.
Parading a bunch of brown and black drug addicts around will sure keep white kids from doing drugs.
I mean come on. Most kids won't identify with these women. They'll think: I won't turn out that way. And the kids who might identify with poor minorities are poor minorities themselves. I doubt Sheriff Joe gives two tiny rat farts about the welfare of poor people.
I grew up in Phoenix. Scrolling up from the bottom, the picture was the first thing I saw and I knew it had to be Sheriff Joe.
I think there just might be a pretty simple way for the inmates to avoid this treatment in the first place: obey the law.
@9: Of course! How simple. I guess we all forgot that drug addicts are rational actors.
Sheriff Joe's style of punishment comes from the belief that if you make prison so incredibly unpleasant people will make sure they never go back. People vote for him again and again because 1.) The alternative candidate is worse than he is. 2.) Nobody gives a $hit about drug addicts in Arizona (most people in jail are there on drug charges).
Just read the comments made about Carol Gotbaum.
http://www.azcentral.com/arizonarepublic/news/articles/1002airportdeath1002.html
The general opinion was that her kids were better off without the junkie/drunken trash.
I like Sheriff Joe, and will keep voting for him as long as he keeps running for office. He's got the right idea-why should we coddle a bunch of leeches who are nothing but a burden to society? And speaking of leeches, he's got the right idea about illegal immigrants too. Honestly, I wonder sometimes if you left-wing kooks weren't dropped on your heads when you were born.
@12,
This is what a "Good German" looks like.
@12,
Oh, and would you include drug using leeches like Rush Limbaugh, Cindy McCain and GW Bush who had the money to lawyer up when they got in trouble with the law in your little world?
Of course not. They're productive members of society. Isn't that distinction obvious to you? Or did you get dropped on your head too?
productive. interesting definition. silver-spooners and blowhards are "productive." huh.
Yes, productive. I suppose you think those people in the T-shirts and on the chain gangs are more productive. You know, breaking into houses and robbing convenience stores never struck me as particularly productive, but if you think that way, well then, God bless your pointy little liberal head.
Someone should do a parody:
"I Was A Rug Addict"
What's an "alters boy"?
no scorpion, you idiot, i was not saying that the people who are robbing convenience stores are productive. i'm challenging your assertion that cindy mccain, rush limbaugh or george bush are any more productive than those people, in the end run. bite me.
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