Oklahoma’s prison rodeo could return

After a five-year hiatus, the annual prison rodeo at the state penitentiary in McAlester, Oklahoma could resurface with help of renewed interest from a professional bull riding circuit.

The prison rodeo ended in 2010 after a nearly 70 year run. It was one of the country’s last remaining prison rodeos.

“That has just been a part of history here, and it has been missed tremendously,” Kathy Wall, manager of tourism for the city of McAlester said to NewsOK. “We still get calls from people all over the United States wanting to know when it is and if we’ll get it back.”

Wall and other McAlester officials have been trying to bring the event back. Now, Professional Bull Riders Inc., an international professional bull riding organization that has regularly televised events on major networks, has taken interest in bringing the tradition back. However, it has been met with some criticism.

“There are people, even in traditional rodeos, who are against using animals in that type of venue,” Willie Steele, professor of Language and Literature at Oklahoma Christian University, said. “Then there’s also the people that think you shouldn’t use prisoners as entertainment. … I would suspect some of it was economic. … It’s going to be interesting to see, as this gets phased back in, if those arguments resurface and what ends up ultimately happening.”

Some have said the reinstatement of the prison rodeo could be a productive outlet for the prisoners.

“Prisoners need to be exposed to the outside world more,” sophomore Benjamin McCoy said. “They are obviously away from society for a reason, but the goal for them is to be able to return to society as a changed person.”

McCoy said a rodeo for the prisoners to participate in would be a good rehabilitative event.

“Events like these make the transition from prison to the real world a lot easier,” McCoy said. “They may have done terrible things in this world, but they are still humans who need a chance to change.”

Corrections officials ended the long-standing event that pulled in visitors from across the country because of low staffing at the prison and the need for expensive repairs to the stadium.

“It has substantially affected our tourism revenue for our city, and that’s why I’m pushing so hard to try and get this back,” Wall said in a NewsOK article,

Wall, in the article, cited a city study that showed 89 percent of the revenue generated by the rodeo came from out-of-town visitors.

Wall said McAlester has found parties interested in covering the estimated $100,000 necessary for stadium repairs and suitable law enforcement personnel to help staff the event.

However, some remain skeptical if the rodeo is for the benefit of the prisoners, or just the city.

“The entertainment value, whether that’s for the prisoners or the crowds coming in, will be interesting to see how many parallels it draws to God of the Rodeo,” Steele said. “It’s my hope that the prisoner here in Oklahoma will learn from that and make sure there’s a system in place that doesn’t take advantage of the prisoners and makes sure it’s as safe as a rodeo can be.”

“God of the Rodeo,” a novel by Daniel Bergner’s about the annual rodeo at Angola State Penitentiary in Louisiana, depicted the problems of race, class, masculinity, religion, family and violence.

“A lot of times, sports can reflect, for good or bad, the issues in our culture,” Steele said. “If it’s a way for prisoners to feel validated and as though they have achieved some sort of notoriety beyond the crime that got him incarcerated, that could be a good thing. I think the flip side of that is if this will just be manipulating and taking advantage of prisoners who have no other options.”

An event mentioned in NewsOK said the penitentiary would tie $100 to the horn of a bull and whoever could grab it, wins the event and keeps the money.

“Tying $100 to the horn of a bull is for your entertainment, not for theirs,” Steele said.

Steele said he would be interested in seeing how the Oklahoma prison assured the safety of their prisoners during these events.

“It’s interesting to me because the prisoners don’t have a whole lot of outlets for anything really,” Steele said. “Part of me thinks it has this sort of Christian versus the lions in the coliseum, where people on the outside come in to watch blood sport. The flip side is there are people on the outside who enjoy rodeo and sign up for it and nobody is forcing these prisoners to do it.”

If the Oklahoma prison rodeo is reinstated, Steele said it may show sides of the human nature that are uncanny to those seen in God of the Rodeo.

“There’s that element of violence that people love,” Steele said. “We’re such a sports driven culture in the United States and we try to gloss over the big problems. I want there to be some sort of safety precaution in the prison because if not, it turns into dog-fighting. It’s not sport; it’s just cruel and unusual punishment.”