Tour of Sheriff Joe Arpaio’s Tent City Jail

Maricopa County, Arizona


In November 2009 I had an opportunity for a “tour” of the Maricopa County Tent City Jail set up by Sheriff Joe Arpaio. As a tour, we did not see much of the actual Tent City, only going along part of the perimeter and also viewing some of the visitation area and intake offices. Nevertheless, it was very interesting.


Here are some surprising things I learned ...


Everyone in the Tent City Jail volunteered to be there. When convicted by a court of a crime and sentenced to less than one year in jail, if the judge thinks the person is suitable, he is offered the choice to do his time in the regular indoor county jail or in Tent City. Convicts with sentences longer than one year go to the state prison system.


If a Tent City prisoner breaks rules like fighting or possessing contraband or such, he can be expelled and sent to the regular indoor jail.


After a set time an expelled prisoner can ask to return to the Tent City Jail. To do so he must first volunteer for and be accepted into the Chain Gang program. This is a rigorous military style disciplined “Yes Sir, No Sir” program. If he passes the 30 day Chain Gang program, then he can be readmitted into the Tent City Jail.


Most prisoners choose the Tent City Jail. There are good reasons.


Instead of being cooped up indoors in a cell or a day room with other prisoners, he can live outdoors in the Tent City yard. There is an indoor air conditioned day room he can use at Tent City if he wants.


Tent City residents have the opportunity to work, generally off site. They go into communities and clear trash, do laundry, pick fruit (for the prisoners to eat), and do assorted other tasks. Time goes faster than sitting indoors.


Every day a Tent City prisoner works counts as two days on his sentence. So they get out faster.


When they are not working, they can do anything they want within reason: sleep, exercise, wander around, read, watch television.


Prisoners deemed dangerous or violent or otherwise a behavioral problem are not admitted to Tent City.


Medical facilities are available week days. Emergency medical care is always available. If a prisoner asks to see a doctor he can usually get in in 2 or 3 days, always within a week. This is faster than normal people can usually get in to see a doctor. They accommodate diabetics (have a lot of them), and numerous other chronic maladies at Tent City, providing necessary health requirements.


The tents can be hot in the summer and a bit cool in the winter. However, they are identical to facilities for US soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan.


During the day Tent City Prisoners can go to the day room, which is air conditioned. Television is available, but there are only 3 channels: ESPN, Food Channel, and Weather Channel. An exception is the Super Bowl, which is usually shown.


Prisoners are not allowed to have any of the following: alcohol, tobacco, drugs, coffee, any fire making device or materials, anything that can be classified as a weapon (includes ropes or cords that could be used for strangulation), or in general anything modified from its original purpose.


There is a Tent City store where prisoners can buy items charged to their accounts, which must be filled from external sources (prisoners are not allowed to have money). Indigent prisoners can get a special package including pencils, paper, envelopes, postage.


The prisoners wear zebra-striped uniforms. Underwear, sheets, towels, blankets, and other items are all dyed pink. Essentially clothes are exchanged daily for clean clothes. If a prisoner goes off on a work project, upon returning, they strip off all clothing and are showered and issued new clothing. This way they can get two showers and two sets of clothing in one day.


We saw the area where the stripping takes place. It is outdoors housed in a big tent. There are successive bins for each type of clothing article. The prisoners enter, and successively deposit shirt, pants, underwear, socks, and so on into the appropriate bins, then go to be showered.

During our tour a group of prisoners about 100 yards off were arriving coming to the strip-off facility from Laundry Duty. They were in the zebra prisoner outfits, marching two-by-two, handcuffed in pairs, coming to the facility. They saw us tourists and a few called out something or the other. The loudest was a shout “Criminals!” Our tour guide removed us from the area before they arrived as he said “we don’t want to see 40 guys undressing.”


The Tent City prisoners get two meals a day. There are federal requirements on daily calories and they are exceeded. At about 8-9 am they get the morning meal. It consists of two huge buns fresh baked at the prison bakery, a good bit of meat of some kind to make a sandwich, two pieces of fruit, a snack, and other items. The snacks are something they can save to eat later if they want, like a small bag of chips, peanut butter and crackers, and so on. Most of these items come from donations or surplus. Farmers can donate excess fruit and get a tax write-off. If they have unpicked fruit, a Tent City work group will come out and pick it. Evening meal is usually a hot stew of some sort, plus other items. It costs about $1.30 per day to feed a prisoner.


If a prisoner can show that he needed a special diet before coming to Tent City, that diet will be accommodated. This includes such things as diabetic and renal patients. However, it also includes vegetarians, vegans, and “no-porks.” There are numerous special diet classes that are accommodated.


Prisoners work 3 or 4 days a week, depending on what needs to be done or is available and availability of supervising guards.


Off-site work project guards are armed. Guards at the Tent City are not armed, except perhaps with pepper spray if they want it.


Many work projects are clean up. For example, the highland lakes around Phoenix sometimes have areas trashed by users. Prisoners clean these up. They also clean up roadsides. Some low income areas of Maricopa County are trashy because residents cannot afford to have trash removed. Periodically Tent City crews come in and clean them up.


The visitor facility was interesting. For each visitor there is a telephone receiver and a video screen. There is an identical set-up inside the prison area. The prisoner and visitor are hundreds of feet from each other in separate buildings. It is planned to have a visitor center more centrally located in another part of the city. A prisoner gets 90 minutes of visitation a month, with no rollover of unused minutes. A prisoner’s visitor minutes can be broken up into however many parcels with however many visitors he wants.


A regular prison to replace Tent City was scoped at $79 million about ten years ago. Tent City has cost only about a million to construct.