It is rodeo day at Louisiana’s state penitentiary, home to 5,200 murderers, rapists and armed robbers, and thousands of spectators are having a grand old time. They have seen prisoners hurled from bucking broncos, and others competing to hold a wild cow long enough to extract a cup of milk. They revelled in “Convicts’ Poker” - a perennial favourite that involves four prisoners playing cards at a table as they are charged by a bull: the last one sitting wins. Three men have already been taken to hospital, but the convicts don’t mind. They are volunteers, and the rodeo offers them a rare chance to win money, have fun and, for once in their wretched lives, stand tall. Now it is time for the finale - “Guts and Glory”. About 50 inmates will vie to pluck a $600 (£305) poker chip from between the horns of a rampaging 2,000lb bull. The huge beast erupts from its pen. It charges at the nearest men, who scatter. It catches a man on one horn and tosses him into the air. Another inmate is trampled. Nobody dares to get near the raging animal. (via Death Row Rodeo: the Louisiana prison miracle - Times Online )