Thought for Food

May 8, 2008

Death Row Rodeo: Angola

In college, my Irish boyfriend spent a month in the US with me. We did New Orleans, we did New York, but the thing he’ll never forget — the moment that crystallized America’s otherness in his mind — was the Angola Prison Rodeo.

It’s held every weekend in October. Only inmates with records for good behavior are allowed to take part. They want to run around a ring, chased by angry bulls: it gets them out of their cells and hard labor assignment, and there’s the possibility of spending a restful week in the infirmary.

Competitions include:

Inmate Poker, in which rodeo clowns rile the bull into a folding-chair-smashing frenzy, and last inmate playing at a card table wins)
Guts & Glory, in which 100 inmates are put in the ring with one bull that’s seein’ red. The inmate who snatches the poker chip attached to the bull’s snout wins like $100.

There’s a strange carnival atmosphere — children and hot dogs and cracker jacks — but it’s dangerous stuff. The announcer cried in a sing-song voice, “He don’t need a paramedic. He needs a seamstress!” (Badum-bum!)

There are inmates all around you. Outside the stadium, they stand in cages, ready to sell you for their homemade handy crafts, mostly woodworking or religious themed crap.

A couple hundred inmates are allowed to watch the rodeo. Most are simply flanked by guards, but others are seated inside a huge cage.

“Those are the sex offenders,” a guard explained, “they’ll rape ya as soon as look at ya.”

I wore a short denim skirt that day. Never regretted an article of clothing more in my life.

claytoncubitt excerpts the Times article…

Even today it represents, in one sense, the worst of the US penal system. It is a prison from which only a handful of inmates will leave in anything but a coffin, no matter how exemplary their behaviour.

via mandalay

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