Here's a long portrait of Arizona's Joe Arpaio, the self-described "America's Toughest Sheriff." In his case, "tough" seems to include a heavy dose of racism and a presumption that anyone who gets arrested for anything is surely guilty and should be treated like dirt. The whole thing is interesting if not appalling but I was especially struck by this…
Meals [for prisoners] were cut to two a day, and Arpaio got the cost down, he says, to thirty cents per meal. "It costs more to feed the dogs than it does the inmates," he told me. Jail, Arpaio likes to say, is not a spa — it's punishment. He wants inmates whose keenest wish is never to get locked up again. He limits their television, he told me, to the Weather Channel, C-SPAN, and, just to aggravate their hunger, the Food Network. For a while, he showed them Newt Gingrich speeches.
The bad meals and physical abuse are bad enough. But don't the Gingrich speeches qualify as cruel and unusual punishment?