The Sheriff Who Brought Cookies
and Feminism into the Jail
Beth Arthur
 

Beth Arthur seemed to have everything going for her when she ran her first race for sheriff of Arlington County, Virginia, in 2000. Since she had been appointed earlier in the year, she was running as the incumbent, she was a Democrat in a Democratic County, she was well-connected and well-known within county and state politics, and she had former sheriffs and politicians supporting her. But it was hardly business as usual, since her opponents made sure voters knew that Arthur lacked street policing experience—an indirect method of reminding everyone that she was a woman running for what has traditionally been a man’s job.

It was very important for Arthur to establish her credentials with the voters because to be more than an interim appointee, she would have to run again in November 2003 for her own full, four-year term. Appealing to voters on the basis of gender stereotypes backfired for Arthur’s opponents. She won the 2000 race with votes from about fifty-eight percent of the electorate and when she ran November 2003 she was unopposed in both the primary and the general elections. Arthur said she was somewhat surprised to have run unopposed, but that two factors probably aided her; one, the Democratic Party is very active and very strong in Arlington County, and, two, since the sheriff runs in an off election year cycle, voter turnout is lower than in federal or gubernatorial years, which aids the sheriff running with Democratic endorsement. Arthur’s explanation is somewhat modest; she has also worked tirelessly to maintain good relationships with both parties and with all segments of the county’s population.

Today Arthur is one of only about 30 women sheriffs across the country. Despite the differences in their roles and career paths, women sheriffs and women police chiefs each comprise about one percent of the chief executive officers in their respective areas of law enforcement. She is one of few sheriffs who is a member of NAWLEE and became involved primarily when she learned that the 2004 conference would be held in Arlington.

Politics led to policing

Arthur trod an unusual path to the sheriff’s department. Despite her more than fourteen years in the department when she was named interim sheriff in July 2000, and having always been a sworn officer, Arthur’s background was political and her experience was administrative. She had been involved in political campaigns since she was a teenager, something she said, she inherited from women in her family, including aunts, her grandmother, and her mother, all of whom had been active volunteers. Following in their footsteps, she had been, she said, “the “king-maker, behind the scenes, doing hands-on stuff, but had never thought of being either the king, or, more appropriately, the queen.” 

She had been a volunteer in Charles Robb’s first two senate campaigns. Through him she met one of her earliest mentors Arlington County Sheriff James Gondles, who hired her as his director of administration. A graduate of Virginia Commonwealth University with a bachelor’s degree in mass communications, Arthur describes herself at that time as “a mouthy twenty-five or twenty-six year old who didn’t mind asking or saying whatever.” In 1990, when Gondles left the department to become executive director of the American Correctional Association, the Circuit Court judges followed his recommendation and appointed his chief deputy, Thomas Faust as his successor. Faust promoted Arthur to director of administration, a position she had held for more than a dozen years when Faust told her he was resigning to become executive director of the National Sheriffs’ Association. In answer to her question “who will be the sheriff,” he replied, “you.” It was the first time she had thought about being the sheriff, but she immediately began to think “well, why not, why should I help somebody else again when I can do this.”

When she was appointed on July 8, 2000 by the Circuit Court, Arthur was responsible for the day-to-day administration of an office with a budget of more than $20 million, and almost 300 employees, most of whom worked in the new jail and courthouse that had been build during her tenure. She had been involved with the transition from the old to the new facilities and had worked closely with accrediting agencies to assure that the jail, which housed more than 500 detainees, met the highest professional standards. 

But she’d never been a street or hail deputy and had not attended the academy even though she had always been a sworn officer.  Her opponents in her first election reminded the voters of this frequently, as each sought the mantel of toughest cop in the county. If they had expected her to back down from a fight, they were wrong. Sounding like an actor forced to play a number of characters, Arthur lost her slightly southern cadence and dropped her voice to a baritone when quoting her opponents. She noted that while neither specifically raised the issue that she was a woman, one, Elmer Lowe, a retired deputy who had left the department before Arthur was appointed sheriff, stressed that he had been to the police academy and had worked his way to middle-management, something Arthur could not claim to have done. He failed to mention that he had worked for Arthur.

Her other opponent, John Baber a former Arlington County police officer who was making his second run for the office, stressed that he would be out in the middle of night, patrolling along with his deputies. Arthur countered that the sheriff’s job was to be a manager, not a deputy. “The sheriff’s job,” she said, “was not to serve court papers or work in a courtroom, but to manage those who did. I mean, it’s true I’d never worked in the jail, but that’s not the sheriff’s job. I’ve gone in the jail, I’ve hung out in the housing unit, I’ve assisted deputies, but for me. I did that for more than a decade. My job, the sheriff’s job, is to assure that I have well-qualified employees who are well-trained and have the tools they need to do those things. I had done that for more than a decade.” Further, she reminded voters that although deputies have police status in the state, none are assigned to patrol. “Why would I be riding around the streets at midnight; none of my deputies are. They’re in the jail, where they are paid to be,” she said, still sounding incredulous that Baber hoped that the mostly well-educated Arlington voters could be convinced that their sheriff was a character out of a Western movie.

But Baber, running with the endorsement of the Northern Virginia Fraternal Order of Police, refused to drop the matter, asking if voters wanted a sheriff who knew how to purchase office supplies. “That’s what he actually said: ‘Do you want your sheriff to be qualified to purchase office supplies?’ It irritated me, not because I’m a woman, but because he totally distorted the job that I had. I was a manager, the director of administration, and he’d demoted me to the sheriff’s administrative assistant.” Rather than describe the appeal as overtly sexist, Arthur attributed it to his Baber’s (over sixty) and his years in law enforcement before women were active partners in the job. In addition to getting angry, she got even. When Baber was asked at a candidate’s forum how he would be able to work with judges he had insulted by implying that they had selected an unqualified candidate when they appointed Arthur, he replied that he would meet with them and would explain the situation “man to man,” providing Arthur with the opportunity to remind listeners that four of the nine judges were women. 

Despite these experiences, similar to other women sheriffs who brought more administrative experience than hands-on policing to their campaigns, Arthur believes that a woman need not have been a deputy to run for sheriff. She does believe, though, that a woman could not get elected without some relationship to law enforcement, most likely as an administrator, but possibly as a law enforcement educator or as a prosecutor. Although sheriffs are viewed in most states as their counties’ chief law enforcement officers, they are also overwhelmingly elected officials. Unlike police chiefs, they not only manage their agencies, but usually run with a political party designation and must face election every two or four years. In areas where the sheriff’s office provides traditional police patrol, it is unlikely a sheriff without police experience would be elected, but in counties where deputies are involved solely in jail management, courtroom security, and civil activities for the county courts, patrol experience becomes less important.

In addition to being a woman, and having never worked directly in the jail, Arthur was younger than either of her opponents. At 41 when she ran in 2000, she was also the mother of two sons, one four and the other almost seven. “I considered these things in a flash when Tom told me he was leaving. I knew that if I took the interim job I would run to keep it, and I wasn’t sure how it would affect my family,” she recalled. She was concerned that her husband would not like the idea of opening the family to public scrutiny. But she knew his mother had always worked but had still managed to be there for her four children. “When I came home and said ‘Tom’s leaving,' and indicated that I was thinking of running but was hesitant because of how it would impact us at home, my husband said, ‘Well you are running and we will just figure out the rest as we go along. This opportunity comes once in a lifetime.’” He is quieter than me, even in some ways a homebody, but he was very supportive. You can’t run for office without support at home, but though he jokingly hangs it over my head when it suits him, he was out there, shaking hands, talking to folks, reminding them to vote for his wife,” she recalled. Possibly he wasn’t surprised; she had worked through both her pregnancies, officially taking time off but bringing work home throughout the period she was supposedly on leave.

Detention issues overlap with women’s issues

Throughout her career, but especially since her first election, Arthur has shown a willingness to grapple with issues in corrections and jail management that overlap women’s issues surrounding equal opportunities (even in jail programming), health and safety, and women’s interaction with their children. She instituted a program called Read Me a Story that allows women to read books on tape to their children. She also opened the detention area to contact visits between inmates and their children during the winter holiday season and on Mother’s Day for those charged with or convicted of nonviolent crimes. It led to Arthur’s selection as one of three “persons of vision” by the Arlington Commission on the Status of Women for 2002. Arthur has tried to implement a similar program for men, but there has been little interest among the inmates. Should interest increase, she will consider expanding the program.

“Am I a softee because I’m doing something like that,” she asked. “No, I think we need to recognize that these kids need to maintain contact with their parents and hopefully that contact will help them not to end up where their parents are. And does it help these parents, when they’re sober, when they’re locked up in jail to recognize how their actions are affecting their children? Maybe I do care about that because I'm a mother and a woman, but I'd like to think that there are a lot of men out there who care about those issues as well.” She has broadened the Addiction, Corrections and Treatment (ACT) Program for substance abusers by increasing the number of cells for the program, which tries to create a therapeutic community for those who volunteer to participate. To protect all inmates, but primarily women, she instituted training program for new deputies and annual refresher training for staff on sexual misconduct. She recalled that before she became sheriff a spate of sexual misconduct allegations led to the termination of five employees, the resignation of one, and disciplinary action against two others. Arthur has worked with the advocacy group Stop Prisoner Rape and has instituted a zero-tolerance policy of sexual conduct between staff and inmates, reminding them that it is not only inappropriate but also illegal. 

She increased the department’s involvement with Operation Identi-Child, which provides children’s fingerprints for parents to retain, and with Safety for Our Seniors Plus (SOS Plus), which provides crime prevention information to seniors and permits those alone or disabled to receive phone calls and in-person visits from deputies and volunteers to help assure that they are not mistreated or isolated from the community. 
Is management gendered?

Arthur felt that her management style reflected that she had grown up in a predominantly woman’s world. She and her four sisters were raised by their mother and a grandmother who had four daughters and only one son. And there were the two political aunts. “It’s funny,” she said, “I have two sons, so we will see how this all works out.” Discussing whether women and man manage differently—something that many women in male-dominated professions prefer to avoid—she believes her style is more hands-on than a man’s might be, although she admitted that she is irritated by those unwilling to make the time commitment to their jobs that she had done. She also admitted to having baked cookies for those who worked in the jail, particularly around holiday times. The last time she did that, though, her co-baker was a male captain. “He said if I wanted to do, he’d come over and help. We drove my husband crazy, but the staff appreciated that and the prepared food we ordered for them so they would have something of the holiday,” she recalled. 

Although Arthur is comfortable in her own skin, she is aware that women may have more difficulties than men in establishing a management style. Even if the manager herself is confident, employees may be unsure how to respond to a woman. Arthur has accepted that many women view their careers differently than she does and that some men resent working for a woman. “If we women are soft, that’s no good because we are seen as weak. We if are aggressive, we get called the "b" word,” she said. For the foreseeable future, though, Arthur is most concerned with the “s” word, as she works hard to remain Arlington County’s sheriff.