PHOENIX -- The Maricopa County Sheriff's Office announced Monday afternoon it is eliminating its use of restraint chairs to calm combative prisoners.

The sheriff's office said effective immediately, deputies will confine unruly prisoners to "safe" beds and padded cells.

"Now is the time to take the direction that many hospitals and psychiatric wards have, " Sheriff Joe Arpaio told reporters.

The chairs, about 35 of them, have been at the center of wrongful death lawsuits involving inmates. The devices have also been criticized by Amnesty International as well as jail consultants hired by the county.

Attorney Michael Manning told the 5i Team over the summer, "There are serious questions, nationally, about the safety of these restraint chairs."

At least three inmate deaths in Maricopa County have been linked to the chairs. Two have cost the taxpayers millions of dollars.

This summer, the 5i Team announced it had discovered another death.

Jail surveillance video showed Clint Yarbrough being escorted into the Fourth Avenue Jail on Dec. 21. Less than six hours later, he was carted out on a stretcher with almost no pulse. He died in a hospital later that morning.

This is just the latest in a series of deaths in the restraint chair the 5i Team has investigated since 2002.

The team also found the chair has cost taxpayers millions of dollars. The county's insurance deductible recently rose from $1 million per case to $5 million per case, meaning taxpayers will now pay five times what they did in the past if the sheriff loses another large lawsuit.

It's something of which county leaders are aware.

The 5i Team investigation turned up a stack of audits, memos and court rulings that characterized the restraint chair as a liability. In one report, a consultant hired by the sheriff wrote, "The best recommendation I can professionally make in respect to the restraint chair is to remove it from any use associated with the Maricopa County Sheriff's Office jail." That was in May 1997.

As of today, the county and its insurance companies have paid out at least $18 million in jury awards related to the restraint chair. That does not include the latest, the Yarbrough case, which hasn't gone to court yet.

Manning said, "It has cost the county a lot of money. This culture as it exists today is going to cost the county even more money in the future."