The first time I came to Baton Rouge to take a tour of campus, I stopped with my mom at the Frostop diner for a milkshake and some foreign delicacy called a “po boy.” While there, I picked up a weekly newspaper and read an article about the Angola Prison Rodeo.

For those who don’t know, like I didn’t, the Angola Prison Rodeo is a yearly rodeo put on by the prisoners and staff of the Louisiana State Penitentiary in Angola. Over the years, it has evolved into a full-blown festival, giving prisoners the chance to make some cash selling handmade crafts.

For about a week after reading the article, I couldn’t get the idea of the prison rodeo out of my head.

I mean, it’s Louisiana. Prisons are supposed to look like “Cool Hand Luke,” with a demagogue sheriff in a wide-brimmed hat and constant threats of nights in “the box” looming over the prisoners’ heads.

This sounded more like the kind of East Coast thing talk-show radio hosts love to call “bleeding-heart.”

Needless to say, I knew I had to see this strange phenomenon for myself.

I finally got my chance Sunday, when I made the early-morning hike up route 61 to the massive expanses of the prison and its surrounding farm. As everyone in that area is eager to tell you, the entire island of Manhattan could fit within the limits of prison property.

Now, after spending more than a year in Louisiana, I’ve revised my earlier, stereotypical views of the prison system here. 

I know we’re a little bit past the days of “Cool Hand Luke,” but Louisiana’s prisons are still some of the harshest in the country. Louisiana has nearly double the national average per-capita prison population, a consistent record of criticism for prisoner welfare. 

I knew it was going to be gritty.

So I was surprised, entering the grounds of the festival, to see prisoners in their old-timey black-and-white stripes, guards in their uniforms and fairgoers in their cowboy boots all talking, laughing and generally loosening up.

It was a jovial scene where it could very easily have been tense, and we should praise the prison for that. Nothing could help the inmates prepare better for assimilating with the real world than to actually let them interact with it. 

It would be easy, and honestly unsurprising, for the prison to simply keep its inmates chained up for the duration of the rodeo. But because they’re charged with a small amount of freedom, the prisoners make it a matter of pride to be on their best behavior. 

The prison management seems to have realized that if it treats its inmates with respect, they’ll show they deserve it.

Many of the prisoners I talked to said they spend much of the year preparing for and looking forward to the rodeo. Though most aren’t able to participate in the proper bull-and-bronco rodeo games, prisoners run food carts and arts-and-craft booths in the festival area.

Throughout the year, prisoners perfect skills like cooking boudin, painting and basket-weaving so they can sell their wares at the rodeo — all skills that could be leveraged into a job when they are released. 

One prisoner I spoke to, who was unable to give his name, said he hopes to use his painting skills to find a job painting houses when he is released. He also said painting artistically has been useful for him to work through anger issues.

Angola is a bleak, gritty place. Its very name is a frightening memento, supposedly derived from the homeland of the slaves who worked the plantation that previously occupied the land. 

Most of the time, it’s not somewhere to bring your kids, but once a year, when the rodeo comes along, everyone loosens their belt a little, and even the grim concrete walls of the prison seem a little more hopeful.