Gates of Injustice: The Crisis in America's Prisons
by Alan Elsner
Financial Times/Prentice Hall
Copyright © 2004 by Alan Elsner
Chapter One: The Second Toughest Sheriff in America
"The liberal approach of coddling criminals didn't work and never will." President Ronald Reagan
Sheriff Gerald Hege liked to boast that he ran the toughest - and pinkest -- jail in America. It was definitely the pinkest but maybe only the second toughest. From his sleepy, small town base in Lexington, North Carolina, self-described Barbecue Capital of the World, Hege turned himself into a national TV personality by striving for the unofficial title of meanest, baddest, roughest, toughest sheriff in America. He was also possibly the only one to have his own theme song, "The Man in Black."
"All you bad guys had better leave town
Sheriff Hege's not fooling around
Your days of breaking the law are through
When the Man in Black comes after you
(Spoken) That's right. He's got that big stick.
Go 'head and make his day.
He sure loves the smell of handcuffs in the morning."
Hege was narrowly elected sheriff of Davidson County, a mainly rural area located in the middle of the state, in the big national Republican landslide of 1994. He quickly made a mark by painting the inside of the 300-bed county jail bright pink with blue pictures of weeping teddy bears on the walls to make inmates feel like sissies. It was the height of the "get tough on crime" movement sweeping the nation and Hege's testosterone-soaked image perfectly fit the moment. He wore a black, paramilitary-style uniform and was often photographed wielding a five-foot-long stick or a semi-automatic. He designed a new logo for the Sheriff's Department -- a spider's web with a big arachnid in its center -- and he had a giant silver spider painted on the hood of his personal squad car, a souped up, Nascar-style 1995 Chevy Impala with a Corvette engine...