Violence and Social Salvation at the Texas Prison Rodeo

Abstract

From 1931 until 1986, at the annual Texas Prison Rodeo, incarcerated people performed before massive crowds. In this negotiated space, prison officials, audience members, and imprisoned riders welded together a performance of violent range labor with a discourse of social rehabilitation. Responsible for funding all educational and recreational programs for the incarcerated population of Texas, the rodeo purported to save lives even as it risked them. Prisoner-led reforms in the 1960s and 1970s, however, helped expose the failures of Texas's labor regime, stripping the rodeo of its rehabilitative pretenses and contributing to the eventual demise of prison rodeo in Texas.