Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo wants to give prisoners a college degree…he believes allowing inmates to earn college degrees while serving their sentences would keep more of them from returning to prison. After all it only costs around $60,000 a year to house a prisoner and the college degree thing would only add another $5,000 a year to that.

Is Sheriff Joe of Maricopa County Arizona the only lawman left that will openly say, “I’m not here to rehabilitate prisoners, my job is to punish them”?

Arpaio has between 7,500 – 10,000 inmates in his jail system, Sheriff Joe has 2,000 prisoners living in tents, no air conditioning no heat in the winter and in the summer the tents can reach temperatures of as high as 140 degrees.

To humiliate the prisoners, Arpaio dresses them in old-school chain-gang stripes sustained by twice-daily meals that are the cheapest among the nation’s lockups and forces male prisoners to wear pink underpants (because they were stealing the white ones) and they work on chain gangs.

Also impressive are the Sheriff’s get-tough policies. For example, he banned smoking, coffee, movies, pornographic magazines, and unrestricted TV in all jails. He has the cheapest meals in the U.S. too. The average meal costs between 15 and 40 cents, and inmates are fed only twice daily, to cut the labor costs of meal delivery. He even stopped serving them salt and pepper to save tax payers $20,000 a year.

This year, he even saved over a $100,000 a year by cutting out meat and using high protein soy products in its place.

I remember a couple years ago, prisoners were complaining that the police dog’s food was better than they got. When the press asked Sheriff Joe about it, he replied, “The police dogs work.”

Are crooked politicians any better than the common criminals in Sheriff Joe’s jail? Are jails and prisons supposed to be for rehabilitation and schooling or punishment? And finally, why are there people on death row that have been there for YEARS eating up our tax dollars… when we are letting people out of prisons because they are overcrowded?

Sheriff Joe has been elected over and over again, because the people want good law enforcement, bad guys in jail and punishment over attempted rehabilitation. Sheriff Joe continues to get thousands of dollars in election contributions from local people and people from out of state as well.