The Associated Press
CHATTANOOGA, Tennessee- Jail crowding prompted a county judge to suggest putting prisoners in tents, an idea Tennessee’s jail regulators said they frown on.
General Sessions Judge David Bales suggested the tent city for prisoners during a discussion by the Hamilton County Commission Public Safety Committee.
Commission Chairman Larry Henry said he would instruct Greg Beck, chairman of the commission’s Security and Corrections Committee, to look into the suggestion.
“I don’t think we need to make it too comfortable for (inmates),” Henry said.
The Tennessee Corrections Institute decertified the Hamilton County Jail in December because of overcrowding. The jail, with a capacity of 489 prisoners, had 574 last month when the institute conducted its annual inspection. The inspector did not recommend recertification.
The corrections institute would not recommend putting prisoners in tents and “they (Hamilton County) would not meet standards by doing that,” spokeswoman Peggy Sawyer said in a telephone interview Wednesday.
“No one that I know of in Tennessee does this,” Sawyer said.
“They have a very good facility. Seldom do we find deficiencies that amount to anything,” Sawyer said. “Their only problem is overcrowding.”
Institute records show about 25 jails in Tennessee were not certified in 2005. That number has dropped to 18 currently.
The state Department of Correction has never put inmates in tents, a spokeswoman said.
Hamilton County officials pointed to Maricopa County, Arizona, where Sheriff Joe Arpaio said he used 70 donated Korean War tents to for prisoners in 1993. The tent city, near a dump and waste disposal plant, accommodates 2,000 inmates who are serving sentences of up to a year, he said.
Arpaio said a thermometer he takes into the tents during visits registered 140 degrees Fahrenheit (60 degrees Celsius) earlier this year.
“The philosophy I had was if you build a hotel, people will check in,” Arpaio said Tuesday.
He said he also has used pink handcuffs for prisoners and required them to wear pink underwear. Arpaio’s jail policies have been criticized by groups such as the American Civil Liberties Union and Amnesty International.
Both Henry and Arpaio said soldiers often live in tents in the middle of the desert.
“Sometimes prisoners are treated better than they are,” Henry said.