For many years now the people of Arizona have continued to elect Joe Arpaio as their county sheriff. So popular is he that a range of nodding-head dolls made in his likeness have sold in their thousands.

The main reason for this popularity appears to be his no-nonsense attitude to crime. In short, Sheriff Joe believes that prison should be tough if it is to deter criminals from re-offending.

He has banned smoking, coffee and pornographic magazines. He has also taken away all cable TV channels except Disney and the weather channel, and ensures jail meals cost no more than 40 cents each to produce.

He has also addressed an area of prison life that has always baffled me: the practice of allowing extremely violent criminals to spend hours in prison doing weight training.

Sheriff Joe has taken the weights away but inmates get plenty of exercise on the chain gangs he has introduced to do free work on county and city projects, as well as cleaning up litter and graffiti. In order to avoid accusations of discrimination, he has a female chain gang as well as a male one dressed in traditional prison garb.

When inmates and the usual opportunists complained, he told them bluntly: "This isn't the Ritz/Carlton. If you don't like it don't come back.''

As a cure for prison overcrowding, he has introduced "tent city" which houses around 2,000 inmates in Korean War surplus tents. This led to complaints from inmates about the scorching temperatures. To which Sheriff Joe replied that soldiers had to put up with such conditions in Iraq in full battle gear and they hadn't committed any crimes.

The justice system should attempt to rehabilitate and Joe Arpaio has introduced America's only accredited prison high school.

Over here we are rightly keen on rehabilitation but some people have lost sight of the fact that court sentences are also to punish and to deter.

There is no doubt that there is overcrowding in Britain's jails. The prison population stands at 77,000 and is set to exceed 90,000 within five years. But rather than introduce Joe-style "tent city jails" to cure overcrowding, there are calls here for better use of community-based punishments as an alternative to custody. The problem is that the British public often perceive this as a soft option.

Indeed, when a criminal is given such a sentence, rather than going to jail, it is often reported that he or she has "walked free" from court.

Criminals do carry out some very useful work as part of community service orders, but the public is often unaware of this. So the introduction in the North-East of a scheme in which criminals carrying out community service orders wear bright fluorescent tops emblazoned with the logo "community payback" has merit. It will allow the public to see that such orders are not a soft option.

Of course, the usual suspects are already up in arms at the move. Liberty say it is wrong to "degrade" criminals by making them wear such fluorescent jackets.

Well, as Sheriff Joe might say, tough. Liberty should be more concerned at how degrading it is for people to be mugged, or have their homes burgled. If people don't want to be labelled in this way the answer is simple - don't commit crime.

Published: 05/08/2005