Postcards from Long Island (9)

Long Island - Promising young cellmate I taught to trade the financial markets. Released on the 11th of December '05 and rearrested February ’08. Alleged to have committed forgery and hit an officer with a car. He’s writing from Sheriff Joe Arpaio’s Lower Buckeye jail.

You’re not going to believe what Sheriff Joe Arpaio is doing now. He has installed stationary exercise bikes with electric generators in each pod. When someone pedals the bike, the electricity that’s generated powers our TV’s. Arpaio was even on CNN a couple of days ago demonstrating how the bike works. He said that his inmates are too fat! We barely get enough food to survive as it is and now he wants us to pedal a bike in order to watch TV. Arpaio has got to be stopped.

A law firm named Osborn Maledon, P.A. came through here a few weeks ago and asked a few people to do food journals for an entire week and send them to them. I was one of the ones that did the journal. I recorded every item in the lunch bags and on the dinner trays, including what condition the food was in. Since then the food has gotten worse. The jail has retaliated for the investigation. He took the dessert off the dinner tray, and now we get what is commonly known as “jailhouse slop.” The Arizona Republic even did an article about it.

The inmate store gets more and more outrageously priced. Sodas that were 50 cents in the Arizona Department of Corrections, Arpaio sells the same ones here for $1.50. Stamps that are 44 cents, Arpaio is selling to us for 56 cents a piece. I don’t see how that is even legal!

Click here for Long Island’s previous blog.

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Shaun Attwood