it's a long way to those gates and once man reach there they know they're just so so far away far away from our vision far away physically far away among. and gola louisiana just more than five thousand men considered the most dangerous criminals in the state a locked up in this penitentiary. inside the inmate population is eighty percent black and comes mostly from louisiana's poorest neighborhoods nine inmates out of ten a serving sentences so long that they're going to die and i.

may call into the phone eighteen thousand acres the largest maximum security penitentiary in the united states. in the eighteenth century angle was a slave plantation. it took its name from the origins of the slaves who came from uncle a in africa. today any incoming prisoners first assigned to hard labor in the jails.

no no no pocket knives no southbound x.x. no way. five times ten thousand people gather at angola to watch the prison rodeo a rodeo for the prisoners inside the prison they don't started in nine hundred sixty five and today it's the only rodeo allowed in a u.s. prison it's cool in the wild the show in the south it's all so. will cain is the man behind the success of the rodeo. in the last decade cain has transformed the rodeo into a massive money spinner for his prison. wouldn't pay in a southern baptist is a popular figure in louisiana in two thousand and three his peers voted him warden

of the year. round and i wanted their baby or me and them are the five you know we're in this together i'm doing tam good so they're at the bike and not oppression is there if that we really are are locked together it was i look forward to it the fire on tap i like to think. not to think people clap for them i never forget the back of the ballot crowd they're here because the crime victim but still we can be rehabilitated program because the rodeo i. mean may come boys volunteers. but each rodeo around fifty of them sign up to face the bulls in wild pools is the radios considered a special treat for the prisoners only those with a good record are allowed to enter the arena. and this is almost like freedom for me. galaxy. any opinion i do will i'm now

behind was about time they co-create this special case when american spirit could tell let us. take away from the scale of. the rodeo gives the inmates the chance to see them families outside the prison visiting area even though they're not amount to touch their loved ones this unofficial visit is something a lot of inmates look forward to. in one thousand nine hundred eighty eight this journalist published an in-depth book on the angola prison rodeo. these men are not seen even often by their own families once they pass the ten or fifteen year mark of their sense so here comes the sabbat once now twice

a year where the stadium is packed for society columns and these inmates take that chance to be seeing. still. holds. a seat but. only. but this exposure has a price most inmates come from open areas of louisiana and have never been around bulls old horses before being locked up in angola. and despite them lack of previous rodeo experience none of them is allowed to trade.

i think there's a perverse aspect to it definitely i mean look you've got convicts who are not trained who are quite likely to get hurt and a crowd that's coming there to see the oddity and perhaps the perverse that of it that is troubling to say the least. i could make trying to read it without trying in my did we have to rip the doc to come tearing a knock out of the neck in trying to try him out over to make him better ran or we

put on armor on him we have practical trial and you'll see today i don't expect anybody out of the art very badly if at all. i. don't like the. people who really wants to see. some baggage slip by the bull you know somebody get through by the horns. and. nor is henderson spent twenty seven years of angola but never took part in the rodeo today he works as a paralegal in new orleans. just by the grace of god there's nobody has actually been killed in a situation like. main i've seen guys who have been kicked in the face by us kicked

in the face. you know who are bull. but these guys just continue to put to simply you know what motivates them you know lord knows i'm some of them go out there for the simply for the prize money. simply in it's not that it's a fortune it's the fact that in prison one hundred dollars is a lot of money. hundred dollars can sustain a person in prison for years is basic needs for alone time. whether paid for inmate labor is about twenty five cents an hour most inmates are more than willing to clash with the bulls for the biggest prize money some cowboys use they went to improve their life in prison some spend it on legal fees of ascended to the families. it's time for a comeback poca the premise is simple the last man sitting at the poker table wins

the two hundred dollars pot. i do for the money and for the excitement you have to i mean s. what is about to come out and compete if you want to do want to compete you want to win and are part of what is. sacrificing it sometimes even if you don't buy it you have to sacrifice to get what you need to get that. his dad was the absolute silence. you know they're trying to. maneuver fourteen hundred two thousand. two hundred. my life both. we've talked to guys about their oreo why did you do it and there is there's just

not one concrete answer. carrie myers has been locked up in angola for the past fifteen years as editor in chief of the person magazine miles has covered many rodeos. some of it is is the is a recognition you got a guy who a lot of people in prison have low self-esteem they don't feel like they've ever accomplished i think one people out there to see that they've done something in here but they're more they're worthy of something that they're actually you know worthy of. being human i on the one hand is this moment when the men get this chance at transcendence and redemption but on the other side the rodeo is now conducted in these striped shirts which were always a symbol of sort of the. totally separating the end mates from society

totally separating them from any image of humanity those striped shirts were abolished in the one nine hundred fifty s. and gola for precisely those reasons of being excessively degraded ordered them back i don't think that's something that thrills the conflicts though they probably won't say. this is the human. this nice price on the human. life no nothing. now i want to see. jerry brown's favorite event is the guts and glory. the inmates have three minutes to grab a chip off of a two thousand pound raging bull the winner gets three hundred dollars. i. mean after the peaceful. but is ten well you have to get aggressive you've got to

get. crazy look at him like that and we just want to look at him like the obvious. god works through me and we did. so made good use they do with us and good god will be there with. jerry is twenty eight locked up since ninety ninety five he's serving a life sentence since he first entered the competition in two thousand. brown has become a celebrity. doing a good job. in

a way i feel like alone i'm alone here i feel like i'm on a place you know because of the level of education is different my process goes on different. aware care of myself is different you know. what i have to offer society is very different. jerry brown decided to get an education in prison he reads books writes poetry and especially letters which is the only way to avoid censorship but on goal. when i mentioned i wanted to be an example i meant to beacon of hope inspiration in courage meant and success to all those that chose to watch and witness a. this type of example is needed here in a place of such does elation disparity and neglect. and environment that came up in violence around you all day when these are going

fight someone against their family can share that is invalid vileness while when i face the board i'm not scared. made it easy to scam someone managed to block the summit. steal breathe and x. go i thought for sure he'll give a reason my destiny was a life full of haughtiness it's a must bless this. journey grew up in one of the pools like my old city in three full days no the e.c.m. . suits you just down to a town and his mother was a drug addict jerry had to be raised by his little sister and his grandmother. as a kid to be trying to escape his drug and gang infested neighborhood by wrapping your family i'm not he should know me to my question my mind is chemically. kind of

predict could just jump to the stone age we're going to be in if you can upgrade me not marry charles ramsey is jerry's brother in finance a small rap studio his journey was going up charles was the first one to believe in jerry's talent and i couldn't believe you know this key with. that he was. and he just. you know took it from there you know he became literally the best rapper you know if he'd a vamp out on the street and buy the better me because you know he may be the truth about your first big chairs million. you can run. to learn more about jerry to pencil and paper. we're best friends.

you know i learned to pencil and paper that i was the most important woman this. bunny brown jerry's mother has been on probation for four years. since her release from prison she's been fighting for the right to go to angola and visit jerry the son she hasn't seen in ten years he loved me more than anything. and. when things took a turn. for the worse for me. to turn for terry for the works to. see. my personality is built around our seeing around the set a young age when i was small like. this guy used to beat my mom the palm of time right in front of me and my mom you know and for me what he.

was not known was that it was creating a lot of anger in me because i was so small and i couldn't help him and he was home boom boom boom i became a drug advocate crack addict. a good indeed jerry was constantly in fights concerning his modeling. over the ocean. and this. and this only. if you'll souls not the human having any. role models anything he didn't really have anybody to of or nay to his his family members that were all all in mostly in and out of jail all of his life in concentrated. to. begin. to. beg you

will be a part of the gang in the told you. i guess he. took. you know. a place of protection a word now because the. at firs we we used to be together out of ten like a fast old working so between a native night i really would never fall and you know and he just had to do and if what he thought he had to do and he became a poet again. as a teenager jerry joined a gang on june the sixteenth one thousand nine hundred five a man you want to deal goes bad jerry shoots and kills. on the day of jerry's arrest it was bunny who convinced him to end this standoff and surrender.

louisiana has one of the highest crime rates in the united states legislators adopted a tough on crime approach to try to solve the problem they've stepped up arrests and convictions since the seventy's been made population in louisiana has increased by one thousand percent. the culture of louisiana is one that. does not prepare people in general for success in life because there is one the prepares people for success and prism. louisiana also has the highest rate of inmates capita in the world. the state has around eight hundred prisoners to one hundred thousand people that's ten times more than countries like france or germany.

a professor of criminal justice has been a regular visitor to angola for the past twenty eight years. he's an expert in corrections systems. legislators who are primarily. it's primarily white primarily coming from smaller cities smaller tails and rural areas who are making laws designed to protect the people of louisiana from crimes committed mostly about poor people living in cities many of whom are boy probably in this room within the next few years one of you will be murder if you believe this. and i say this tough on crime approach enjoys broad support in louisiana a majority of the citizens believe the tougher laws and permanent incarceration on needed to beat the criminality in this state. community do you realize.

we're locking our sales up instead of the problems we're putting our sales behind bars we're building our territory walls around our stuff why because we're afraid of the criminals out there with prey to what happened to us like they should be locked up and we should be able to walk around streets we do we have a strong sense of family and family values and lose down to that if you abuse or murder one of our family members then we want you to take the. sentence is a tough eighty nine inmates sit on death row let them go. since nine hundred seventy two old life sentences without the possibility of parole. louisianan still cost his life sentences for murder aggravated rape. kidnapping and the so-called third strike of the jewel offenders.

don't cravings democratic state senator of a louisiana has been fighting since one thousand nine hundred two to try to reform the legal system in his state. we fail i mean we fail miserably because we have not provided a better community we have not transform the lives of those young people especially who make mistakes we've not given them an opportunity to redirect their lives so what we do is we tend to believe that if we lock them away a lock them up and throw away the key that somehow we're going to be safer i don't think our system is failing it just means that our culture demands a different criminal justice system than they have in your bend it demands the don't pay or. the promos will be out of control in this country if we don't take a very firm stance.

as you may or may not know a child whose parent is incarcerated has a five time greater chance of want to present themselves so we are creating generations of new in sometimes even worse criminals. and and and we paying for it and we paying for it measurably in. this prison policy is costly. in two thousand and five louisiana budgeted six hundred million dollars for its prisons including around one hundred million for angola. in april two thousand and five new orleans hosted an international warden's convention for three days wardens from across north america shared their

experiences and told business. it gave them the opportunity to shop around for the latest security systems for their prisons. and goal is looking at the need some now need the fence fence that's give you a shock and then change to anything more than then we'll kill you big business each dollar cost two hundred fifty thousand dollars four thousand million dollars he of just to maintain you put a system like that. what actually is very big here we can afford to incarcerate our murderers but there's a bigger cost if you don't there's a cost to society and pain and suffering in misery there's a cost in terror and fear. in we don't want these people out so if the prisons are overcrowded then we should build big ones if you've been down go you know we've got a lot of. this

. is.

a vote for bush for bush the bush. always by one vote. so the people that are going to be validating this machine can stand there all day

long and vote for somebody and it will be right every time but the guy can walk up here and if he hits the right buttons he can flip. a recap of the stories that shape the week russia avoids wildfires caused by record

breaking heat expand to new areas play me almost thirty lives and leaving thousands homeless. and major disclosure a whistleblower web site wiki leaks publishes thousands of classified documents revealing cover ups of the war in afghanistan including a reported civilian deaths. plus water supplies in russia's far east are under threat as china struggles to prevent sounds of toxic barrels swept away by flooded river from reaching the russian border. it's eighty am in the russian capital you're watching our teeth thanks for joining us this sunday morning i'm marina joshie welcome to the program the fires that have ravaged central russia over the last week are continuing to spread across even greater swathes of the country so far twenty eight lives have been taken by the

blazes and thousands of people are now homeless sarah ferguson is in the varanus region one of the worst hit areas and we can now talk to her and get the latest good morning sara so are there any signs of the fire situation in russia easing this morning at all. well the still one hundred thousand hecht is still burning a huge amount of land cause of course by the extreme heat wave that russia has seen over the past month that has left this done extremely dry very susceptible to these outbreaks of that we still say and unfortunately no sign of the heat abating just yet so imagine sea services really still trying to get the situation under control we've had they've had a huge amount of help from volunteers and from the russian army all say trying to gain control of the situation there's still around two hundred pounds of villages that are under threat where the rent is being very badly.