why in the hell they have to be inmates???
the original was an open race with murderers as idols and a massacre of innocent bystanders for points... "blessed by none other than the U.S. president himself (although it was a world nation now) the film was a criticism of our addiction to violence to the point (as a society) that we celebrated murder instead of condemned as a crime... kinda prophetic, isn't it?
Now i guess the P.C. people changed the whole idea just to fit today "proper image" and not feeling guilty about a innocent people getting run down as a sport, since they will be "bad people"