Joe Arpaio and the Phenomenon of the 'Toughest Sheriff in America'
JOE ARPAIO AND THE PHENOMENON OF THE 'TOUGHEST SHERIFF IN AMERICA' _____________ A Thesis Presented to The Faculty of the Department of History Sam Houston State University _____________ In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Master of Arts _____________ by Nicholas D. Rizzi December, 2016 JOE ARPAIO AND THE PHENOMENON OF THE 'TOUGHEST SHERIFF IN AMERICA' by Nicholas D. Rizzi ______________ APPROVED: George Diaz, PhD Thesis Director Nancy Baker, PhD Committee Member Wesley Phelps, PhD Committee Member Jeff Littlejohn, PhD Dean, College of Humanities and Social Sciences ABSTRACT Rizzi, Nicholas D., Joe Arpaio and the phenomenon of the 'Toughest Sheriff in America'. Master of Arts (History), December, 2016, Sam Houston State University, Huntsville, Texas. Since first winning election as the Sheriff of Maricopa County in 1992, Joe Arpaio has cultivated an image as the ‘toughest sheriff in America.’ While Sheriff Arpaio has often been the subject of headlines and contemporary journalism, other than a handful of scholarly studies focused upon incarceration methods within Maricopa County, scant historical study has been devoted to Arpaio. The study will examine issues of race, ethnicity, conflict, and cooperation in the borderlands from the seventeenth into the twentieth centuries. Furthermore, the thesis will examine the mystique of law enforcement in the West, before finally exploring the confluence of all these factors that ultimately facilitated the rise, notoriety, and resiliency of Joe Arpaio as the Sheriff of Maricopa County. The research is taken from a combination of primary and secondary sources. The first two chapters rely heavily upon assorted secondary scholarly studies related to law enforcement in the West, race, ethnicity, and intermittent periods of conflict and cooperation in the borderlands.
[Show full text]