If you get arrested in Galveston County, you’re going to have to wear hot pink.
The Galveston County Jail is replacing the typical olive green uniforms often used in Texas jails with “new safety pink jumpsuits,” Galveston County Sheriff’s Office said in a Facebook post Feb. 24.
The Sheriff’s Office said they believe the hot pink prison uniforms will “discourage recidivism, enhance visibility for corrections officers in identifying potential threats, and create a calming atmosphere as the color pink is believed to help alleviate feelings of anger.”
Switching to “safety pink” is an effort to “foster a positive environment within the correctional facility,” the Facebook post said.
The Galveston County Sheriff’s Office said the first inmates to wear the new hot pink uniforms volunteered to pose for a group photo.
Several commenters on the Galveston County Sheriff’s Office’s post, which received 950 comments and nearly 3,000 shares, expressed concern that forcing inmates to wear hot pink uniforms was a humiliation tactic and did not believe the uniform change would actually prevent recidivism.
Another Texas jail, Mason County tried switching to pink uniforms, pink slippers and pink sheets back in 2005, CBS News reported. Mason County Jail is about two hours drive northwest of Austin.
One of three inmates interviewed by the Associated Press in 2006 said they refused to work outside where someone might see them wearing the pink uniforms.
“I’m not going outside in these things,” the anonymous inmate said in the interview. “It’s a good deterrent because I don’t want to wear them anymore.”
Then-Mason County Sheriff Clint Low said he was inspired to adopt the pink jumpsuits by a sheriff in Arizona, Joe Arpaio, who issued inmates pink boxers to prevent underwear from being stolen. Because Low dyed the jumpsuits and slippers pink, the pink dye spread to sheets and other laundry in the jail.
Former Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio was involved in numerous controversies throughout the time he oversaw a “Tent City” outdoor jail near Phoenix, which he called a “concentration camp” meant to hold “illegal aliens” to his supporters, The Guardian reported in 2017.
Although Arpaio later received President Donald Trump’s first presidential pardon after he was found guilty of criminal contempt of a federal court, but he was still known afterwards as a “disgraced sheriff,” The Guardian reported in 2021.
Despite all of this, Joe Arpaio ran for mayor of Fountain Hills at the age of 91, Phoenix station AZ Family KTVK-KPHO reported in 2024.
Online commenters in the Galveston Island Crime Watch Facebook group said the sheriff’s office was “copying AZ” and asked officials to “cite the studies that show the positive effects of this,” comparing the Galveston County Sheriff’s initiative to Arpaio’s “tough on crime” attitude.
Eleanor Skelton 