And then there’s the Arts and Crafts festival at the rodeo, where prisoners can sell jewelry, leather crafts, paintings and other handmade items.
Roth, author of Convict Cowboys: The Untold Story of the Texas Prison Rodeo, the event was deliberately “ratcheted up to make it more dangerous and crazy [...] to distinguish it from free world rodeos.”
Wall noted that 89% of the OSP rodeo revenue came from out-of-towners. The event was closed due to staff shortages and the fact that the stadium requires at least $100,000 in repairs.
A similar event, involving attempts by prisoners to retrieve a bag of money from between the horns of an angry bull, served as one of the top tourist draws at the Texas Prison Rodeo, which was held in Huntsville from 1931 to 1986.
Rarely does the public find anything entertaining about a person who has been convicted of a crime and sent to prison. That is not the case with prison rodeos, however, which draw people from all over the U.S. and even other countries.