Down in Louisiana, prisoners who would receive a 5 year sentence for robbery in the North can get 40 years, and you might get sentenced to life (for real, with no possibility of parole) or to death for a first offense. But the love doesn’t end there.

80% of the 5,400 prisoners at Angola prison get no visitors, have no claiming relatives, and have no hope. Small wonder that some of them would rather play poker in a rodeo stadium with the prospect of being gored to death by a 2000 pound bull than sit around waiting to die.

In Convict’s Poker, four prisoners sit around a poker table while a rampaging bull charges them. The last to get up wins $100 or $200. Many of the players leave the stadium for the hospital with broken bones or severe wounds. And if they should get trampled to death, it saves them from life in prison or lethal injection, and its good entertainment value for the rodeo audience, comic relief from watching the professional rodeo riders.

Apparently, as a result of introducing this program, prison violence is down.

(source)