Bergner sketches some pertinent history, such as how from early in the century to the 1960s paid security was reduced to a fraction and guards were convicts, armed. A hospital run by a convict who had been a mortician's helper was only one reason for federally mandated reforms in the 1970s. A sole television blares over industrial fans that reduce the risk of tuberculosis. Stainless steel toilets are exposed. As laborers, prisoners earn 4-20 cents per hour.
Commissary prices are the same as in supermarkets.
Half of what prisoners earn is put into mandated savings accounts, even though few get paroled. Bergner uses his vicarious insider's perspective to advantage. We learn how inmates make tattoos from deodorant, toothpaste, a steel guitar string and a cassette-player motor. God of the Rodeo is less effective in Bergner's dealings with Angola's warden, Burl Cain, who initially seems a font of enlightenment, encouraging regular family visits, literacy classes, and clubs such as toy-making. Cain's primary objective, he asserts, is rehabilitation.