Where `hard time' has new meaning

Prisoners pay $1.20 a day for food, $10 to see a doctor. Soon they'll live in tents. Pitiless? ``Too bad,'' the sheriff said. ``We save a lot of money.''

Jail house TV sets offer only religious, motivational and educational programs. Inhospitable? ``I don't think they're entitled to TV at all,'' the sheriff said.

R.C. ``Bobby'' Knowles, the hard-eyed sheriff of St. Lucie County, believes in hard time. Politically astute, he espouses the quaint notion that prisoners should be punished, not merely incarcerated.

What we do not have here is a failure to communicate.

``We want to make jail a place you don't want to come back to,'' said Knowles, 55. ``Make it hard, make it uncomfortable. Make it fair and clean and consistent with the rights of human beings, but jail is supposed to be a bad place to go.''

Borrowing a concept from Broward County -- a concept blocked eight years ago by a federal judge -- the St. Lucie County Commission last week authorized Knowles to build tents for overflow prisoners.

The canvas surplus Army tents should be ready by summer. They will not be air-conditioned. A sign outside a model tent within sight of Knowles' office: ``Vacancy. Coming Soon -- Affordable Inmate Housing.''

Said the sheriff, who served as a Marine sergeant in Vietnam:

``If it's good enough for American troops, if it's good enough for people who lost their homes in Hurricane Andrew, it's good enough for someone who's committed a crime.''

Knowles' methods are simultaneously old-fashioned and innovative. And they reflect a growing trend, as taxpayers tire of what they perceive as indulgent treatment of prisoners:

In North Florida, jailers pack up weight-training machines. In the Deep South, chain gangs suddenly reappear. In Arizona, a sheriff pitches tents for 1,500 inmates, feeds them bologna sandwiches, makes them wear pink underwear and grins when people call him ``the meanest sheriff in America.''

Knowles, in office since 1985, faces tough opposition in this fall's Republican primary from an ex-FBI agent. For Knowles and many other politicians, hard time is an easy sell.

Maybe too easy, according to some experts.

Professor disagrees
``Basically, he's trying to pander to the lowest common denominator, people who don't really think very much but simply want to hurt people who have hurt them,'' said Paul Cromwell, a University of Miami professor of criminology and sociology.

He said research shows that repeat offenders rarely consider the consequences of their actions. So, he said, restricted TV programs and striped uniforms have little or no lasting effect.

Besides, Cromwell said, ``Incarceration itself is the punishment. You don't have to add all these other things.''

Nonsense, Knowles and his aides say. Common sense dictates that people -- even malevolent people -- will avoid unpleasant experiences.

Knowles: ``We've spent billions of dollars on rehabilitation, and obviously it hasn't worked. Now it's time to try something else.

``The public wants truth in sentencing and the punishment to fit the crime, and that didn't happen for 30 years in our country.''

Selective treatment
Most of the sheriff's measures apply only to inmates who have been convicted and sentenced; those awaiting trial or sentencing are treated more conventionally. In addition, some anti-drug, educational and other rehabilitative programs are conducted at his prison.

The variables that govern crime statistics complicate assessments of Knowles' program, but he said major crime declined by 7 percent last year in the unincorporated area that is his prime responsibility.

``Inmates are learning that if they want to commit a crime, they should do it somewhere other than St. Lucie County,'' said Mark Weinberg, a spokesman for the sheriff's department.

Incentives for moving on down the road: