THE REAL HARD CELL

By Richard Lacayo

Joe Arpaio's job title is sheriff of Maricopa County, Arizona. But as the man who oversees 5,900 inmates in the county jail, he might better be thought of as the headmaster of his own school of hard knocks. Since he came to the job early in 1993, Arpaio has organized his prisoners into chain gangs, housed them in tents in the scorching desert and made baloney a staple of their diet. Skin magazines and all broadcast TV stations have been banned. ("Too much violence,'' he says.) For free-time diversions, they get CNN, old Disney films and reruns of Newt Gingrich's 10-part course on revitalizing American civilization. "I want to make this place so unpleasant that they won't even think about doing something that could bring them back,'' says Arpaio. "I want them to suffer.''

Maricopa County is not alone. The hottest development in criminal justice is a fast-spreading impulse to eliminate anything that might make it easier to endure a sentence behind bars. Figuring that it makes no sense to use taxpayer dollars to help criminals pump up, several states have got rid of prison body-building equipment. Others have begun charging inmates for medications and infirmary visits that used to be free. One of the most popular restrictions is a ban on popular in-cell possessions like the one now in effect in Mississippi, where convicts are forbidden to have their own televisions, record players, radios or computers.

The politicians and prison authorities who are putting the squeeze on inmates say they are simply responding to public outrage over soft conditions--things like the prime ribs served at the annual banquet for "lifers'' at one Massachusetts facility or the federal court order that required North Carolina to equip each of 13 prisons with a set of drums, three guitars and five Frisbees. Both of those examples were mentioned in a November 1994 Reader's Digest article that has become, if not a manifesto, then at least a ready inventory of gripes for the no-frills movement.

Why is this happening now? After a long upward curve, many kinds of serious crime declined sharply this year, but the public mood doesn't always fit the dips in the uniform crime report. And the enormous explosion in the U.S. inmate population--to 1.5 million, up 100% in 10 years--required roughly $20 billion in taxpayer outlays in fiscal 1994. When many law-abiding people can't afford cable TV, the thinking goes, why should convicted embezzlers get it?

Experts say there is no research to demonstrate persuasively whether tougher prisons lead to reduced crime. But for people fed up with lawbreaking, there is an undeniable psychological satisfaction in the thought of making hard time live up to its name. "Politicians are responding to the public, which is looking to impose mild forms of torture,'' says David Anderson, author of Crime & the Politics of Hysteria. In a new TIME/CNN poll, 67% of those questioned thought inmates were treated too leniently. Chain gangs were approved by 65%. And 51% thought convicts should be deprived of their TV sets and barbells.

Numbers like those are enough to elevate the details of prison administration into presidential campaign planks. As part of his standard stump speech, Texas Senator Phil Gramm says he wants to make inmates work 10 hours a day. At every campaign stop he gets cheers with the line "We've got to stop building prisons like Holiday Inns.'' Gramm has talked about putting Maricopa County's Sheriff Arpaio in charge of the federal prison system.

In Congress, where Republicans and Democrats jostle to see who can be toughest on crime, an amendment to deny some amenities to the nation's 95,000 federal prisoners is now part of the House version of the Republican-sponsored anti-crime bill. If it survives into the final version of the bill--an iffy prospect--the amendment would forbid such things as premium cable channels and R- or X-rated movies. Its sponsor, Representative Dick Zimmer of New Jersey, is also pushing for a law that would reach the nation's 959,000 state prisoners by denying federal prison money to any state that did not ban such things as in-cell TVs and coffee makers, body-building equipment and any food better than that served to U.S. soldiers.

Zimmer admits he does not know how many prisons feature those perks. But he takes the "one prison that has them is one prison too many" point of view. Advocates of prisoners rights, a beleaguered group these days, insist that few lock-up facilities offer much that could be mistaken for the good life. "All prisons are very unpleasant places,'' says Mike Mahoney, executive director of the John Howard Association, a Chicago-based prison watchdog group. They also argue that some of the cost-cutting expectations are based on a misunderstanding about who pays for some inmate comforts. According to a study by the North Carolina Department of Correction, for instance, all 31 of the states that allow televisions in prison cells require inmates or their families to pay for them.

As for work requirements, nearly all prisoners already work--91% in the federal system, 70% in the state, according to a 1991 report by the Bureau of Justice Statistics. Those who don't work typically include the medically or mentally unfit, as well as the most dangerous offenders, the ones who can't be trusted to rake the yard without blinding another inmate. The average prisoner workweek is 34.5 hours. Federal inmates put in 37.5 hours--though that is still less than the 48 hours that would be required under a Senate bill sponsored by Republican Richard Shelby of Alabama.

Some of the wariest opponents of the no-frills movement are prison wardens and guards, who must live with convicts at close range and say they like to have a variety of options to keep simmering lockups from exploding. That need is especially strong now that the increasingly popular practice of imposing mandatory sentences, a response to public anger over inadequate prison terms, is making it harder to offer time off as a reward for good behavior. To ban such things as TV and recreation as well, warns warden Thomas McKinney of the Alfred Hughes state prison unit in Gatesville, Texas, would "take away one of our best management tools.''

With prisons in 35 states under federal court order to improve conditions, judges have also decided that certain amenities, including adequate recreation, diet and hygiene, are required by the constitutional guarantee against cruel and unusual punishment. That means that some of the harsher get-tough proposals--at least six states, for instance, have considered laws that would permit corporal punishments such as flogging--would probably be forbidden by the courts.

That won't stop politicians from experimenting to make prison life as awful as the constitution will allow. In Tennessee, where overcrowding led to riots and a federal-court takeover of the state prison system 10-years ago, the legislature recently got rid of ice-cream machines and cable TV. Lawmakers there have also approved a proposal to amend the state constitution, which currently requires Tennessee to have "safe and comfortable prisons.'' They want to drop the word "comfortable.''

--Reported by Tamala M. Edwards/Washington, S.C. Gwynne/Gatesville and Richard Woodbury/Phoenix

With reporting by TAMALA M. EDWARDS/WASHINGTON, S.C. GWYNNE/GATESVILLE AND RICHARD WOODBURY/PHOENIX