Lockdown: Tent City Premieres Sun. October 28, 8p et/pt An Environment No One Envies Lockdown profiles a Chain-Gang in Phoenix, Arizona. Watch a Preview >>

Kathryn Wallace - Associate Producer

The scene is straight out of Cool Hand Luke; inmates dressed in black and white striped jumpsuits, chained together at the ankle, breaking rock on the side of the road in the unforgiving desert sun. But this is no movie – this is modern life in Phoenix, Arizona. The chain gangers – mostly in the clink for misdemeanor charges – are serving time in Sheriff Joe Arpaio’s one-of-a-kind Maricopa County jail.

They don’t call him the toughest Sheriff in the West for nothing. His Tent City (boasting a tall neon “VACANCY” sign) is part PR-stunt, part tough-nosed penal colony – and my worst nightmare. Inmates sleep in military group tents, about a dozen double bunks to a tent, fully exposed to everything the desert can throw at you. Temperatures topping 120 degrees Fahrenheit in the summer, contrasted by freezing winter nights, dust storms, scorpions, and on top of that – hundreds of other inmates in a small fenced in space, without bars or safe harbor.

There is no personal space and there are no luxuries. No girlie magazines, no TV, no cigarettes, and a small humiliation included in your county-issued clothing: along with the aforementioned black and white jumpsuit comes pink underwear.

And then there’s the food. My first day at Tent City, I joined Sheriff Arpaio as he gave a guided tour of Tent City to a group of curious elderly folks bussed in from southern Arizona. As we weaved our way through tents and inmates, the Sheriff declared (to sustained applause, by the way) that he had been able to cut the cost of feeding one inmate down from 90 cents to 75 cents a day; it costs over a dollar a day to feed one of his K9s. Inmates exists on green-ish bologna, no coffee and no hot lunches.

Certainly there are plenty of people – many of them at the American Civil Liberties Union – that contend the conditions within Tent City are inhumane, but I got a different feeling from the community – and surprisingly from the inmates confined in the jail system.

The heart of Tent City – and what makes it notorious – is the Chain Gang. Sheriff Joe makes sure the community gets an eyeful of the Chain Gang, putting the inmates on display at every community function as a warning to would be rule-breakers. Despite legal challenges and the scrutiny of public interest groups, the voters of Maricopa County keep Tent City and the chain gang in business.

What I didn’t know is that the Chain Gang is elite. Not just any old inmate gets to be chained together in public, supervised by an officer wielding a high-powered rifle. No. You have to be special. You have to wait your turn, be selected, and pass muster that includes an entire small-print list of rules. There is a bed inspection every morning, and if your cell, uniform and boots aren’t perfect, you don’t go out to work.

I pulled myself out of bed one morning at 4am to go out with the women’s chain gang – the only female chain gang in the world, I was told. When I arrived at the jail, the women were fully dressed, standing at attention and awaiting inspection before the sun even rose. Chain Gang veterans called roll call, and left boots were chained to left boots. They marched to the van calling out in cadence: “We are the Chain Gang!” (Stomp. Rattle) “The world’s only lady chain gain.” (Stomp. Rattle) They said it with enough pride I had to ask about it.

The veterans spoke first. They’d earned their stripes as an ordinary Chain Gang member and were now given the responsibility of teaching the newbies. This was the most responsibility they’d known in their lives, they said, and it made them feel capable. I got some head nods on that. The inmates had pride in their work. And this was the stunner – these women said they were ok with their treatment, the tents, the desert heat, the sour milk and bad bologna. “If it were easy here, I might not work so hard when I get out to never, ever come back here,” one inmate told me.

Maybe some people need a nightmare to wake up.

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