By CHLOE GRUSING
Editorial Editor
In 2024, the state of Oklahoma approved 8.3 million dollars in funding for a prison rodeo.
The egregious tradition of prison rodeos started in 1940, giving a way for prisoners to raise some funds for medical support.
What may have started with good intentions was quickly soiled when the event was opened to the public.
The town of McAlester began hosting a rodeo for the inmates every year due to the event’s success.
The rodeo went for nearly seventy years, ending in 2009 with concerns about the infrastructure of the stadium. The new bill will grant the Oklahoma prison systems 8.3 million dollars to build a new coliseum, specifically for the prison rodeo.
I have great moral issues with this event, and I am in shock that in 2024 this has been approved.
In 2005, the Washington Post published an article about one of the prison rodeos hosted in McAlester. Bill McMahan, the rodeo chairman for eighteen years, in the article he said,
“People don’t go to NASCAR to see the cars run around the track,” he drawls. “They’re waiting for a big wreck; same with the rodeo. It’s human nature. People want to see what ought not be.”
This statement alone is enough of a red flag behind the motives of the prison rodeo. The chairman of the event publicly stated the crowds come just to watch the prisoners get hurt.
Later on in the article, the author mentions the injuries that have been sustained by inmates. These include cracked skull, ruptured groin and thousands of dollars in medical bills.
The prisoners are so deeply exploited as is, then to make them a public laughing stock where serious injuries can be sustained is, in my opinion, unethical.
One of the pretenses to this event is an inmate must sign a waiver stating the prison is not responsible for injuries.
I have a hard time believing the folks spending all day inside would be in a sane state of mind to sign a waiver of such magnitude.
People will be desperate to get outside for two days, the duration of the rodeo, and they could make hasty decisions. Prisoners sitting on death row or inmates with long sentences are going to do anything to be free.
The article also references inmates saying they were willing to do the rodeo for some time out of their cell. The people in charge of the rodeo know the prisoners will not say no, so this calls into question the reasoning behind the event.
The prison rodeo is a sick and twisted event that purposely sets up prisoners for public humiliation. The people running the event have stated that people come to watch for harm to the inmates.
In my opinion, the rodeo is equivalent to dangling a carrot in front of the inmates’ faces. Forcing a waiver to be signed then watching the inmates risk injury is a scary thought.
Besides the exploitation, the money and the violence, the most frightful part is the crowd watching. I am left to question what draws people to find something like this entertaining?
