The Maricopa County Sheriff's Office's website got a bit of a facelift over the weekend, and the new format seems geared toward one thing: poking fun at inmates in Joe Arpaio's gulags.
The redesigned website features on its front page a way for the general public to vote for the "mugshot of the day," which is basically just a way of picking which criminal looks the stupidest/most strung out on meth/mentally ill before being booked into jail.
New Times had a similar feature about two years ago. Ours was on a weekly basis, and it was abandoned shortly after we compared the look of a toothless drug addict to what Governor Jan Brewer might look like before a trip to the makeup chair. Check it out here.
Arpaio's poor treatment of inmates is well known -- you don't get to declare yourself the "toughest sheriff" in America by treating jail inmates like guests at a resort. But publicly ridiculing inmates seems a bit over the top. That job seems more suited for, say, a 41-year-old alternative weekly newspaper than it does the sheriff of one of the largest counties in the country.
Check out Arpaio's new website here.
