Smile, You’re under Arrest

The easiest blog title ever, because that’s actually the name of the show. Yes, Fox has sunk to even deeper depths of the bottomless sink hole known as reality TV. According to Fox executives, the show treats the audience to a reverse “Punk’d”:

“Instead of the worst day of your life and then a joke at the end, this is the reverse. This is the best day of your life, and then we arrest you.”

Excellent! The Austin Criminal Defense Lawyer sarcastically points out that Fox will only target non violent offenders for these “hilarious” sting operations. I agree with his skepticism. What is a non-violent offender? A guy that missed jury duty? A jaywalker? Someone with one too many parking tickets?

Fox executives are good at one thing, and that is sensationalism. I doubt their focus on non-violent offenders has anything to do with thinking they deserve it more than others; instead, they probably want to avoid the danger inherent in prank-arresting someone with a violent felony history or problems with aggression.

To add insult to injury, (or if you are a Fox executive, to make the show even better) Fox has tapped Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio as the show’s host.

For those of you who are not familiar with Joe the Sheriff, let me introduce you. Sheriff Arpaio’s accomplishments in Maricopa County, Arizona include making inmates march in pink underwear, creating a tent city jail in Arizona’s 110 degree heat to deal with overcrowding, creating juvenile chain gangs to bury the dead of local indigents, being sued over 2,000 times in federal court, and costing the state of Arizona over $40 million in legal fees over the course of his tenure.

Yes, that Joe Arpaio.

This show joins the already extremely pro-police and pro-prosecution culture of victimization and fear instilled on television viewers by shows such as Cops. This authoritarian mindset is exactly the kind of culture that allows people like Sheriff Joe Arpaio to not only get away with rampant prisoner abuse, but become wildly popular because of it. Everyone suspected of a crime is a bad person and deserves everything coming to them, due process (and human rights) be damned. Unfortunately, very few are able to see anything wrong with this until they wind up on the wrong end of the law.