KATRINA Bree Dierx is five foot seven. She has brown hair, dyed strawberry, and just celebrated her 20th birthday.

She's also in the lead to have her picture chosen as "mugshot of the day".

Ms Dierx, who is charged with murder, burglary and armed robbery, is just one of the suspects whose mugshots are being used in a bizarre competition run by a sheriff in Arizona.

Visitors to the Maricopa County Sheriff's Office website, mcso.org, are encouraged to vote on which mugshot "you like best" from among the suspects being held.

Each day the image with the most votes is prominently displayed on the front page of the site.

Voters can choose to browse mugshots by category of felony — arson, assault, fraud, homicide and so on — or enter a first name, last name and booking number.

Understandably, the competition has drawn fire from some — but Sheriff Joe Arpaio says it's a good thing.

"I'm putting these people on the web because maybe someone will recognise the person — 'oh that's the same person who did something to me, or stuck up a store'," he said.

"I think it's a great law enforcement technique."

It seems visitors to the website agree.

Alongside the "mugshot of the day" poll, there's another one — asking whether or not the competition should be allowed to continue.

The results are overwhelmingly in favour. At the time of writing, 84,000 people had voted "yes" and just 20,000 "no".

This isn't the first time Sheriff Arpaio has been in the news for his controversial decisions.

Last month he was criticised for raiding a suspect's house with several armoured vehicles and a tank carrying Steven Seagal.

An attorney for the suspect accused Sheriff Arpaio of staging the dramatic raid for the benefit of Seagal's TV show Lawman.