Localism in action

Direct Democracy campaigns for localism. One of its policies is for directly elected sheriffs to be responsible to voters in their neighbourhoods for policing. The hope is that this encourages us to vote for me such as Joe Arpaio, the sheriff of Maricopa County, Arizona since 1993. You can see his website here.

Sheriff Arpaio has come forward with the superb idea of making convicted drink drivers wear pink shirts, form chain gangs and perform public burials of homeless alcoholics who died of their alcohol abuse. In the past his chain gangs have performed other community tasks, such as litter or graffiti removal.

He is a tough man. He runs the world's only chain gang for women and his brand of retributive justice - where tobacco, coffee, porn, films and television are all banned - remains popular in Arizona. The average prison meal costs 7p to produce, less than is spent on food for the guard dogs.

The sheriff does, however, allow inmates to watch one television channel: The Weather Channel, "so they know how hot it's going to be".

Thanks to the spineless attitude of our political leaders and the intervention of the ECHR, such popular prison policies are unlikely to be enacted here in Britain even though they are sorely needed. I have written many times before about the need for only those who are a danger to society to be sent to prison (by which I mean violent offenders rather than white-collar criminals). Rehabilitation has its place but the pendulum has swung too far.

If we are serious about penal reform, there must be a place in our prison system for the approach advocated by Sheriff Joe.