it's a long way to those gates and once men reach there they know they're just so so far away far away from our vision far away physically far away among. 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 go. they go into the found eighteen thousand acres the largest maximum security penitentiary in the united states. in the eighteenth century angola 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.

now there is no pocket knives no x.x. no weapon. 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 one hundred sixty five and today it's the only rodeo allowed in a u.s. prison it's cool in the wild a show in the south. 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. a southern

baptist is a popular figure in louisiana in two thousand and three his peers voted him warden of the. pound 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 by and now depression is there is that we really are are locked together it was i look forward to it the fanta alex if. not the three people clap with them i'll never forget the back of the ballot ground they're here because the crime victim but still we can be rehabilitated program because the rodeo by. the inmate cumberlands volunteers. at each rodeo around fifty of them signed up to face the bulls and while cool says the rodeo is considered a special treat for the prisons only those with a good record are allowed to enter the arena.

and it's almost like freedom for me in a galaxy or any event i do will i'm left behind was a concrete this is special case when american spirit can attempt to live it you know you take it away it is still in. 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 some official visit is something a lot of inmates look forward to. in ninety ninety eight this journalist publish 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 this event once now twice a year where the stadium is packed for society columns and these inmates take that chance to be seeing. oh a. seat ah. but this exposure has a price most inmates come from urban 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 pro bursts 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 purpose of that event that is troubling to say the least. i can make trying to read it without trying to make it we have to rip the doc to come here is not our cattle back in trying time out open mike you better ranters we

put on armor on and we have for frank up my own and you'll see today i don't expect anybody got to be our very badly if at all. i. i never liked the. people who really wants to see. somebody just flip by the bull you know somebody get through by the horns. 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. maine i've seen guys who have been kicked in the face by a homeless kicked in the face by you know who are bull. but these guys just continue to put to simply you know what motivates them you know lord knows i know some of them go out there for the simply for the prize money. simply him 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 his 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 winnings 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 it 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 part of what it is. sacrificing is sometimes even your own body you have to sacrifice to get what you get but. his dad must have some suicide attempts. you know they're trying to. maneuver fourteen hundred two thousand. to two hundred. my life both. we've talked to guys about the rodeo why did you do it and there is there's just

not one concrete answer to carry my as it's been locked up in angola for the past fifteen years as editor in chief of the prison 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 was they want people out there to see that they've done something in here but they're more they're worthy of something they're they're actually you know worthy of. being human but 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. any goal or for precisely those reasons of being excessively degraded ordered chains brought them back i don't think that's something that thrills the conflicts though they probably won't say always around. this is to be human. this sprite so to. night. nothing. now for us to see. jerry brown's favorite event is the guts and glory. the inmates have three minutes to grab a chip off the holmes of a two thousand pound raging bull the winner gets three hundred dollars. even after the peaceful first but is ten where you have to get aggressive you gotta

get back. crazy i'm a look at him like the film illinois i'm just going to tell you that now i look at him like the opposite. works to me and we did. so made good use make do with just glory god jerry. 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. in

a way i feel like i don't malone i feel like i'm out of place you know because of the level of education is different from prosecutors and different. where care myself is different you know. what i have dollar for society and very day. 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 i'm glad. when i mentioned i wanted to be an example i meant to be can of hope inspiration and 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 i'm glad when i came up with violence around you all day whether you are going fight someone against their from again shadow is invalid its vileness while when i face the boar i'm not skin. needed you see the sky someone managed to be a black man to some of us that but i'm a laughin of steel breathed in x. gospel for sure he'll give a reason my destiny was a life full of hortense's a mother's bless his soul to the journey grew up in one of the pools like maybe it's a city in three florida you know the newseum a secure place it's easy to down just down to town and his mother was a drug addict jerry had to be raised by his little sister and his grandmother. as a kid he tried to escape his drug and gang infested neighborhoods by wrapping.

up his chemical. to predict. the future but if you. break. charles around this is jerry's brother and then ends the small studio as jerry was growing up charles was the first one to believe in jerry's talent and i can believe you know he with faye and that he was. and he just. you know took it from you know he became. the best rapper you know if he'd of been out all the history in me because you know he. says look. it's my right. to learn more about jerry so pencil and paper. we are best friends.

you know i learned to pencil and paper that i was the most important woman in. bonnie 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. it took a turn for terry for the works to. see. my personality is built around our seam around the seven young age when i was small like. this guy used to be my mom the palm of time right in front of us knew him well you know and for me what he. was not knowing was

bad it was creating a lot of anger in me because i was so small and i couldn't help him and he moved on boom boom boom i became a drug addict i became a crack addict. and a good indeed jerry was constantly in fights concerning his mother. over the ocean. and this. and this ole. if you'll souls now the human have been any. role models anything he didn't really have anybody to. relate to his his family members that were all all in mostly in and out of all of his life incarcerated. to get him. to make it to the. big.

bag he would be a part of the gang in the dog. i guess he took to you know have. a place of protection a word because the. at firs we we used to be together out of ten like a festival it 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 alive because there's one the prepares people for success in prison. louisiana also has the highest rate of inmates capita in the world. the state has around eight hundred prisoners per one hundred thousand people that's ten times more than countries like france or germany.

look fausta 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 why primarily coming from smaller cities smaller towns 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 better tetra walls around our stuff while it goes we're free 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 the streets we do we have a strong sense of family and family values and lose alice that's that if you abuse or murder one of our family members then we want you to be punished. sentence is a tough eighty nine inmates sit on death row and i'm going. since one thousand nine hundred fifty two whole life sentences without the possibility of parole. louisiana still cost his life sentences for murder aggravated rape. kidnapping and the

so-called third strike will attend is. done cravings democratic state senate of the 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 transformed 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 or lock them up and throw away the key that somehow we are 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 bennett demands the bounty or. the. most 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 prison 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 miserably 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 woodlands 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 go a ways looking at that need some law 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. to get to what actually is a very big if we can afford to incarcerate our mirth but there is a bigger cost if you don't there is a cost to sat in pain and suffering in misery oh 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. wealthy

british style. sometimes. in the. markets why not scandals. find out what's really happening to the global economy in these kinds of reports.

in india oldies available in the move go into joint be the children's village the gateway to the grand imperial college the tall western girl until you can go with her till. she don't have to go clear brother said the colonel was her job as a retreat. the top stories of the day on from the week a raging inferno a huge firefighting effort is mobilized as blazes caused by record breaking heat in russia spread with thirty dead already losing their home.

afghanistan secrets the u.s. as billions to battle budget as any internet leak of top secret documents expose a civilian deaths and cover rocks in afghanistan and it's just so good strategy in big trouble. also poison peril water supplies and russia's far east under stress as hundreds of barrels of toxic chemicals continue floating toward the chinese river towards the country's border. town debases sweet victory arizona's hispanic community welcomes a softening of the state's controversial new immigration law but leaders say plenty movies to be done. hello and welcome to the program i'm your leisure power on this says aussies weekly

review almost a quarter of a million people have been mobilized across russia to tackle raging wildfires that have been at last said to at least thirteen deaths while over two thousand have been left homeless by the inferno is caused by and record heat wave. in the veronese region said to be the worst affected. there are a variety of issues being hit very very hot the last couple of days by these fires that we say at the moment the emergency services say the situation head has been gotten under control but what we know is that there's still a huge amounts of fires butting throughout russia and that's really proving a struggle to get under control in the last twenty four hours around one hundred thirty five new fires have broken out in the most gave each in syria a huge huge strain on emergency services and we've had the russian minute she have been quoted to help get control of those so huge amounts of volunteers have been needed as well now you can actually probably see behind me some of the deficit.