Bittersweet tastes of freedom at the Louisiana prison rodeo

Imagine the scene: a typical American summer fair. Vendors are selling funnel cakes, hamburgers, pizza and cola. There is a merry-go-round, a craft fair filled with art and trinkets, and a packed outdoor arena where a crowd of thousands, mostly families with young children, have gathered to watch a rodeo and listen to live music.

This particular rodeo, however, has a twist. Its host is the Louisiana State Penitentiary, the state’s only maximum-security prison, better known as Angola. While the thousands of attendees are locals, the scores of vendors, craft sellers, musicians and rodeo participants are inmates, many serving out life sentences.

The event, which takes place every Sunday during October, is one of the last remaining prison rodeos in the US. Once prevalent across the south, most other prisons have shut down similar events, citing safety or monetary concerns.

But Angola’s rodeo perseveres and is now in its 53rd year, despite many detractors.

I am in town to report on Louisiana’s prison reforms — the state has long reported the highest incarceration rate per capita. But the recently elected Democratic governor is determined to reverse that. The bipartisan state legislature this year passed reforms intended to reduce the prison population by 10 per cent over the next decade. Several hundred non-violent offenders are to be released on November 1.

While Angola, located on an 18,000-acre former slave plantation, was once seen as one of the grimmer examples of Louisiana’s prison problem, that reputation has largely changed in recent years, thanks to an array of education and training programmes and a change in prison management.

And still, there is the issue of the rodeo, which for years has divided prison reform activists as well as inmates. Some see it as a welcome distraction from the monotony of prison life, and a much-needed opportunity to have a moment in the spotlight (and make money), while others take issue with thrusting prisoners into a series of gladiator-style events and the lure of a cash prize of a few hundred dollars.

In the tamer of the contests, inmates with no prior training try their best to stay on bucking horses and 2,000-pound Brahma bulls, most being thrown to the ground within seconds.

Other events are wilder, such as pinball, where half-a-dozen competitors are challenged to stand in the centre of hula-hoops and remain there even as a charging bull is released into their midst. In convict poker, four inmates sit around a card table and attempt to hang on to their hand and their seats as a bull charges into the table and sends cards, chairs and inmates flying. An ambulance sits outside the arena at the ready. While the majority of the rodeo’s attendees are white, most of the prisoner rodeo participants are black.

Defenders of the rodeo note that the prisoners who choose to participate in the event do so willingly. Proceeds from the $20 entry fee are reinvested back into prison improvement projects and a programme to help prisoners re-enter life outside. At the hobby craft fair, prisoners can sell their art and goods and pocket the proceeds to buy personal items — clothes, shampoo, deodorant — or send the money home to family members to help meet the cost of prison phone calls home or pay for a child’s school supplies.

Supporters note that the rodeo can have a positive effect on the prison reform movement by giving attendees the chance to interact with the prisoners and establish a rapport — perhaps showing the state’s reforms in a new light.

For critics, these arguments ring hollow. Flozell Daniels, a prominent New Orleans community and prison reform activist, told me he had been repeatedly urged by prisoners to attend the event. Yet he could not stomach the idea of attending.

“I wouldn’t have it in me. I would not survive a visit,” he said, explaining he thought it was exploitative.

While some current and former prisoners described the rodeo to me as a necessary evil, due to the money they earn, more than one also noted that it was bittersweet. After a day of interacting with the outside world, at 5pm it is shut out once again.

courtney.weaver@ft.com