Ahhh, the good old days. Remember the movie Cool Hand Luke? The inmates didn’t have much to entertain them. Cards and the occasional pretty girl washing a car, and, of course, Luke eating too many eggs. Life in prison looked terrible. No wonder Luke shook the bush.
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Then we had the real-life version of austere prison conditions with Sheriff Joe Arpaio’s prison camp. Things like cigarettes and soft drinks and hot meals were not on the menu. What was on the menu was a work program and the very basics:
In a crime-obsessed society that tends to believe that criminals are coddled, Arpaio, a 63-year-old Republican, is the poster boy for citizens who want prisoners punished, not rehabilitated. And for Arizonans who want to make the streets safer, the sheriff has sworn hundreds of volunteers into posses to fight prostitution, graffiti, even drug dealing.
And as an aside,