I HAVE come up with a grand plan to solve our country’s prison crisis. Well it’s not completely my plan to be honest. It owes its roots to one Joe Arpaio.

He has achieved hero status and notoriety in equal measure in America and there is little doubt that his style will polarise opinion. It’s impossible to find a middle ground.

Making male prisoners wear pink underwear and using pink handcuffs is only the tip of an eye-popping prison system that as the Maricopa county sheriff he runs in Arizona.

Sheriff Arpaio first grabbed the headlines when saving the State millions of dollars building a new prison complex. He created a tent city jail and when prisoners complained about the withering 128 degrees under canvas he quickly silenced them.

“It’s between 120 to 130 degrees in Iraq and our soldiers are living in tents too and they have to walk all day in the sun, wearing full battle gear and get shot at and they have not committed any crimes. So shut your damned mouths.”

In case you’re not able to read between the lines there, let me tell you that Sheriff Arpaio doesn’t have a lot of sympathy for criminals.

He has also banned smoking and pornographic magazines in the jails and took away weightlifting equipment.

“They’re in jail to pay a debt to society, not to build muscles so they can assault innocent people when they leave.”

The male chain gangs wear bright pink shirts and he also started America’s first female chain gang ‘so he wouldn’t get sued for discrimination’. Rather than break rocks however, they go out into the community, carrying out tasks such as cleaning the streets and painting over graffiti.

Oh, and in case you’re wondering if he lets them watch television, he does. It’s a law, so they have two cable channels – one is a Disney channel and the other is a weather channel (so they know how hot it will be out on the chain gang the following day).

He also scrapped coffee because it had no nutritional value and when the inmates complained they were told: “This isn’t the Ritz or the Carlton. If you don’t like it, don’t come back.’ The tough-talking sheriff also announced last Wednesday that he was banning 50 types of ‘candy’ for juvenile inmates ranging Snickers to doughnuts.

“I don’t expect this to be a welcomed policy change,” he said.

There is, of course a website and on it you will find a Crime of the Week page with mug shots of people who have been booked – thought it does state in big red capital letters that ‘pre-trial inmates are innocent until proven guilty’.

Then there is the Deadbeat Parents Hall of Shame’ and here you’ll find mug shots of people who owe their families child care payments.

It’s all very in your face and has clearly upset as many people as it has pleased. So, back to my plan.

Given our growing yob culture and a prison system that has become so cushy that, as I wrote here recently, people aren’t bothering to escape or bid for parole, I think we ought to adopt some of Sheriff Arpaio’s ideas, in particular his tent city jails.

The Government has been banging on about shortage of prison space and is releasing prisoners early to help free up room (I wonder what Sheriff Arpaio would have to say about that), so here’s a cheap solution.

Whilst we don’t have a 128 degree climate, we do have some interesting alternatives.

I propose we build tent city jails in midge-infested western Scotland, the rain-battered Brecon Beacons and the Fenlands of East Anglia where winter’s east wind can cut granite in half.

And, of course, dress all prisoners in pink.