Which law enforcement strategy do you prefer - one with a green collar or the other, with pink underwear?
Talk about the feminization of America. Cook County Sheriff Tom Dart's feel-good, touchy-feely gardening camp for jail inmates is getting national attention in the New York Times:
The camp is created for Cook County jail inmates charged with nonviolent crimes. To be eligible for the camp, a jail inmate must be between the ages of 17 and 35 and have pleaded guilty to the charges against him. The garden is one of several educational and vocational programs at the camp.
In addition to the boot camp garden, Sheriff Tom Dart said, there is a program that teaches the inmates how to dismantle and recycle computers, and a solar farm is being developed. The goal, Mr. Dart said, is to give inmates the skills and confidence to get jobs in the growing green-collar industry.
The boot camp also teaches “life skills” and provides extensive drug and alcohol counseling. He said the boot camp recidivism rate is 30 percent, compared with the national average of 67 percent. “If we just did the military structure, the yelling and drilling type of thing, it wouldn’t work,” Mr. Dart said. “It’s the aftercare that makes the difference.”
Compare Cook County Sheriff Dart's law enforcement philosophy to another county sheriff that's got a distinctly different way of handling convicted felons - Maricoupa County Arizona's Sheriff Joe Arpaio:
Arpaio is the former federal drug agent who brought back chain gangs and black-and-white-striped convict outfits. He's the man who blacked out all television for inmates except G-rated flicks, the Weather Channel, Newt Gingrich videos and (opponents of torture may want to look away here) C-SPAN. He put up a neon vacancy sign at the tent city--get it?--served ostrich meat and green bologna to save tax dollars and made the inmates wear that pink underwear to make it harder for them to smuggle it out and to humiliate them. Sales of pink boxer shorts to civilians are a statewide sensation that helps pay for Joe's volunteer posse of 3,000, some of whom carry guns.
As a law-abiding citizen, which law enforcement strategy and tactics would make you feel safer?
Read more: http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,987891,00.html#ixzz1YP1G5jR0
