By Jonathan Katz

    Come one, come all—to the Angola Prison Rodeo! Where the merch is cheap, the blood sport state-sponsored, the undertones of slavery unsettling, and there’s nary a human-rights protest to offend the eye!
    Back in the glory days of the Roman Empire, trained gladiators fought convicted criminals, sometimes to the death. These fights were staged by the government for the amusement of thousands of spectators, usually in order to distract them from the low quality of life they were enjoying. Those nostalgic for similar distraction need look no further than West Feliciana, LA, where the Louisiana State Penitentiary hosts its biannual prison rodeo on April 18th and 19th.
    The L.S.P., commonly known as Angola and also known as “The Farm,” was built on a former plantation owned by a prominent Louisiana slave trader named Isaac Franklin. Franklin amassed a huge fortune by buying and selling slaves, and using said slaves to work his land…for free! Ahh, America. Today, not much has changed in this fertile swath of central Louisiana.  Thousands of prisoners (mostly black) work for pennies an hour at Angola, farming the prison’s 18,000 acres, while a cadre of officers (mostly white) keep a watchful eye. According to research conducted by NPR News, five million pounds of vegetables are grown annually at Angola—enough that the facility needs only to spend an additional $1.41 a day to feed each inmate.
     When I first went to the rodeo, in April of last year, the sun was shining in a cloudless sky. I’d never been to a prison before and I wasn’t really sure what to expect, though I was nervous and giddy from what I’d heard: that in the fifties, a group of inmates slashed their Achilles heels in protest of the brutal and inhumane conditions; that “Gruesome Gertie,” the prison’s electric chair, was now a museum piece—and I hoped I’d be able to see something equally sensational.

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    After a quick check to make sure I wasn’t smuggling in any contraband (camera, cell phone, ammunition), a guard accepted my $10 entrance ticket. At last, I was inside!  I could barely contain my excitement for the rodeo itself (Angola’s web site described numerous events to come, including “Bull-Dogging,” “Wild Cow Milking,” and “Convict Poker”), but I had a few hours to kill before the day’s Big Event.
    Wandering around the prison grounds, I quickly realized that the Angola Prison Rodeo as experienced by a non-convict is much closer to a county fair than to The Shawshank Redemption. The majority of the crowd was comprised of families who were milling about, consuming carnival food, buying things, and generally having a good time. The three hour drive got a mighty hunger in my belly, so I bought a large smoked turkey leg from a nearby convict. Delicious! I then headed over to where a few of my friends were perusing the works of a local artist-in-residence, a criminal whose behavior merited him the privilege of mingling with the free people fingering his oil paintings. Other less well-behaved artisans were confined behind nearby tall fences. This part of the prison resembled a crafts fair, except the vendors were all male and in uniform.
    A $60 oil painting caught my friend’s eye, and he removed some bills to pay for it. The prisoner refused the cash, and instead gave us a ticket and pointed us toward a bank of cashier’s booths, where he said we could complete the transaction. 90% of the money spent on prisoners’ crafts goes to the corporation running the jail, and the other 10% makes its way back to the artist, in the form of art supplies. There were well over a hundred people waiting to check out, and it was still early.

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     Did you know that, with sufficient training, a monkey can gain the ability to ride a sheepdog? Did you know that most prisoners lack rodeo experience? Did you know that when a man is flung fifteen feet in the air and lands on his neck, he cannot walk and has to be dragged off the field? Did you know that one in 100 adults in the U.S. are behind bars? Did you know that the Angola Prison Rodeo is the most fully realized form of American capitalism? Oh, the things you learn in prison!

To experience first hand, the next rodeo is
Saturday, April 18 & Sunday, April 19.
www.angolarodeo.com