September 30, 2013 • 39 mins
Does "Orange Is the New Black" accurately portray life in women's prisons? Caroline and Cristen size up the show versus the reality of the criminal justice system in the United States.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome to stuff mom never told you. From house to folks,
not color. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Caroline
and I'm Kristen, and you guys might have taken note
of the fact that Kristen and I have been, you know,
encouraging you to go watch Orange Is the New Black
(00:23):
on Netflix. It is a really incredible, compelling show full
of really really colorful characters who have pretty incredible and
again compelling backstories. And when we put out the call
to get episodes suggestions, one of the top requested episodes
(00:43):
was to take a real look at real women in prison. Yeah,
so here you go, contest winner, Orange Is the New
Black versus real life women's prisons. And we're gonna have
to give just summaries of all of these different facets
(01:04):
because there are so many different angles to what life
is really like in women's prisons and who are those women,
those very real women who are incarcerated. Um, but we're
going to do the best we can to give you
a comprehensive snapshot of what life is like in there,
(01:26):
and just for a snapshot as well of Orange as
the New Black. It was created by Genji Cohen, who
also created the show Weeds, which I'm sure is a
favorite among some listeners as well, And it's based on
a memoir by the same name by a woman named
Piper Kerman, who is Piper Chapman in the show. She's
(01:47):
the main character. Yeah, and now Piper Kerman serves as
a communications consultant for a firm in New York and
she also volunteers for the Women's Prison Association and has
since joined their board. Yeah, it's pretty cool how she
has parlayed her experience the year that she spent in prison,
not just to write a best selling memoir and make
(02:09):
some cash off of turning it into a show, but
to really use her platform, her privileged platform, in a
lot of ways to highlight the just horrific conditions that
women are living in in prison and also the injustice,
(02:29):
the rampant injustice that is our criminal justice system that
is keeping not only women in prison, but also getting them,
keeping them in this cycle of incarceration. So let's first
talk about the show. Let's talk about some things. Oh,
and I guess we should say spoiler alerts ahead. If
(02:52):
you have not seen Orange as the New Black, you
might want to watch it before you listen to this
podcast because we're gonna share some is not too many
crazy spoilers, but but still we're gonna fill you in
on the show. Yeah. Um, well, so let's start by
talking about what kind of things the show got right,
(03:13):
because I know, you know, as I'm watching it, I'm like, God,
some of these things seem terrible. Some of them seem
not so bad. For instance, a lot of the women
have great camaraderie. Like, how accurate is this stuff? And
so this is coming from um a piece that Jeff
Smith wrote. He's a former Missouri state senator who resigned
his seat after pleading guilty to two counts of obstruction
(03:35):
of justice, and he spent a year in federal prison.
And we're also getting some of this information from a
story that appeared on the cut from New York Magazine.
They sat down with five formally incarcerated women and talked
about Orange is the New Black and how accurate these
portrayals of women and prisoners are. Yeah, And so some
of the general things that it gets right is that
(03:57):
small things have huge consequence. Is for instance, Smith talks
about how one of his main strategies to stay safe,
as he writes, because he weighs only a hundred and
seventeen pounds. He's a pretty small guy. Was to quietly
give stolen tomatoes and onions to certain powerful inmates, which
effectively helped me build critical alliances. Because what what might
(04:22):
seem like minor infractions or social awkwardness kinds of things
really do have outsized consequences. For instance, in the show,
when you have read essentially starving Piper, he he wasn't
at all surprised by that. He was like, something like
that could absolutely happen. And as a side note with
(04:44):
the whole starvation thing, courts have upheld prisons serving neutral
OAF as punishment and neutral OAF for people who are
not acquainted with it. It's the stuff that Piper was
served when she went into the special housing unit. The shoe,
which is essentially solitary confinement and neutral loaf is what
(05:05):
it sounds like. It's a loaf of stuff that doesn't
taste very good, but contains all of the nutrients necessary
to keep you alive. So it's not quite starving someone
to death. Not yeah, not quite. Another thing that is
accurate is just the fact of having to to kind
(05:28):
of make do with what you have creating something out
of very little. For instance, the kool Aid lip gloss
in the show. I think they made signs at one
point and they didn't have paint, so I think they
used kool Aid for that too. But also using in
the show, they've used Maxi pads as shoes or as
masks for when everybody got sick. Yeah. And then one
(05:52):
big question that a lot of people had was what
about the sexual tension, because the way that I described
Orange as the New Black in my notes is that
it kind of makes it look like women's prison is
a hyper sexual lesbian summer camp with really means psychopathic
counselors um. And the ex prisoners said, yeah, you know,
(06:14):
of course people have urges. But the women also pointed
out that the rampant sexy times that you see on
Orange as the New Black are overblown a bit. It's
not as common for women to be constantly having sex
with other women in prison or jail, right, And they
(06:35):
did get it right. Also that the prison administrators really
do not care about the women as people, and that
discipline can be pretty arbitrary. Also that visitation can be
depressing when when relatives come to visit you in prison, Yeah,
on the one hand, you have Pipers family and friends
(06:56):
coming and it's and it's usually pretty awful because they
don't want to It's like they're in denial that she's
actually in prison, or they're being too gawky about it.
It's like one or the other. And then you have
instances in the show like when um, Diana's mom is
sitting there and she's so angry and just trying to
(07:18):
get information from her boyfriend as to whether or not
he's been sleeping around and just all of the you know,
those those two worlds colliding. Um, so understandably visitation, when
the outside meets the inside, it can certainly breed some discontent. Yeah,
and then um, the whole issue. There was one episode
of Orange just the New Black where um, one woman
(07:41):
big Boo, is upset that her kind of ex girlfriend
is is leaving, And so there's this whole issue of
antagonizing people before they are set to be released in
order to try to get them stuck in jail for longer. Yeah,
and in that case, that someone wanting to keep someone
that they love from leaving. But a lot of times
(08:04):
that's what happens with enemies. You've got to watch out
if you're about to leave, and if you've made an enemy, Uh,
there's a good chance that someone might try to sabotage
your release. And speaking of release, and this is something
we'll talk about in more detail, recidivism happens a lot
when spoiler this is a big spoiler when we see
(08:25):
Tasty come back after she's released and she talks about
how it was basically impossible for her to stay out
of prison. She couldn't do it because she had absolutely
no resources. And that is very true to life, because
ex prisoners are given little to no resources to get
(08:45):
back on their feet, especially if they're felons. Well, so,
what does the show get wrong? What are they gloss
over or not portray accurately. One of those things is
the consequences for talking too much, snitching and crossing racial
lines are actually much harsher than portrayed in the show. Yeah,
for instance, when everybody listens to Piper's boyfriend on the
(09:11):
This American Life type show talking about what she tells
him about her experience in prison and all of the
different people who she's essentially snitching on, and everyone's hearing this,
the retribution for that probably would have been much harsher
in a real women's prison. And even though with race,
(09:33):
even though it's very segregated in the show, there's still
a lot more mixing and crossing of those racial lines
than there probably would be. Yeah, and the whole nudity issue,
I mean, you know, the show opens with shower scenes. Um,
the in actuality, there's a lot less nudity in the
showers because you have to just kind of watch your
(09:54):
back you might get assaulted. Yeah, and that's more true
probably in male prisons. That was thing that Jeff Smith
pointed out in terms of listen, you're really gonna want
to be naked for as short of a time as possible. Um. So, essentially,
what the show gets wrong is that the worse is
so much worse. The bad stuff is so bad, and
(10:19):
so you know, I think that if they were to
portray it as it actually is, the show would almost
be unwatchable. Yeah. But on the bright side, one thing
that I found that is true in prison becoming more
true in prison is that yoga is practiced in a
growing number of prisons. Yeah, because it is a great
(10:41):
way to be active and also to relax, and it's cheap.
A lot of times the people who come into the
prisons to teach the yoga classes are volunteers. Yeah. The
New York Times did a whole piece on this and
talked about how even in men's prison, some of the
guys were really hesitant to go and do something they
(11:01):
might have seen as not being really tough, but that
anecdotally a lot of them report really positive benefits from
a regular yoga practice. So there are yoga jains in prison.
But then on a download again, because really from here
on it kind of all the information that we're going
to offer does get a bit dismal. Um, we should
(11:24):
talk about trans people in prison, because we have Sophia Burst,
who has played so wonderfully by Laverne Cox, who portrays
male to female transgender person who had undergone gender reassignment
surgery and later is denied hormone treatment and is having
to deal with the physical and emotional repercussions from that.
(11:48):
And the situation for trans people who are incarcerated is
really dismal, right, And I think it's reflected pretty well
in that issue that you just mentioned of having her
hormone therapy denied. In reality, sevent of trans people in
prison are denied hormone treatment and often end up in
(12:08):
prison according to their birth sex, which can lead to
a huge amount of severe harassment. Yeah, especially for male
to female pre gender reassignment surgery prisoners who might be
put in a men's prison, that risk of harassment definitely
goes up. Um and just a risk for going to jail,
(12:28):
for being arrested, going to jail, being imprisoned is higher
for trans people compared to the rest of the population.
A report from the National Center for Transgender Equality found
that sixteen percent of trans people surveyed had spent at
least some jail time or prison time because of things
(12:49):
like unemployment. Because the unemployment rate is twice that of
the general population, which is often related to harassment, which
is related to being trans gender, and so because of
that high rate of unemployment, they might turn to things
like sex work, drug trades, and also be homeless. Right
and sixteen Also another sixteen six of the respondents who
(13:13):
had been in prison or jail reported being physically assaulted.
Fifteen percent of responds who had been in jail reported
they had been sexually assaulted. So, in a way, the
Orange is the new Black character Sophia has I mean
aside from the hormone treatment issue, that portrays the situation
for a trans prisoner and almost the best possible scenario, right.
(13:35):
I mean, she is still like, you know, verbally attacked,
and she still deals with a whole lot of people,
you know, just saying terrible things to her. But she
is not in a men's prison, right And the a
side note, her hair salon probably wouldn't exist in a
real woman's love her hair and the show, Like I swear,
(13:57):
I just watched an episode last night. She's wearing this
like headband and her hair is all braated, and I
just I was like, I wish I could do that
to my hair, but it's not thick enough anyway. Total tangent.
But another nightmare situation that we've already mentioned is the
special housing unit the Shoe, the solitary confinement where Piper goes.
When she was dancing a little provocatively and Sam Healy
(14:19):
got a little upset with her, This is where inmates
are separated from the rest of the population and they
have very limited activity. Yeah, and about five point seven
percent of federal prisoners, around ten thousand people are in
the Shoe at any given moment, and with the solitary conditions.
(14:41):
Some people have argued that the shoe constitutes a specific
form of torture. Yeah, I mean, I I can't imagine.
I mean, and and in the show, Piper is only
in there for about forty eight hours, but I mean,
she was already you know, her character is already losing it.
I can't, I can't imagine. Well, and then that relates
back to the whole issue of arbitrary discipline, where you
(15:03):
don't know exactly what you have to do to stay
out of the shoe. If you simply cross someone in
a way that they don't like, then you might be
thrown in there. And I mean, and who's to say
how long? You know, how long that you'll be in there? Right? Um,
So let's take a deeper look away from Orange Is
(15:23):
the New Black the show and into women's prisons. And
I cannot recommend the article that we found over at
Bitch Magazine that did just this. It didn't end depth
look at how Orange Is the New Black compares to
real life. And uh, this is a major source for
a lot of these statistics that we're gonna be tossing out.
(15:44):
So for an idea of just how bad the situation
is in terms of imprisonment in the United States. The
US is home to five percent of the world's population
and twenty five per cent of the world's prison and
mates and women are this country's fastest growing prison population.
(16:05):
And according to the Sentencing Project, the number of women
incarcerated in the US increased by six hundred and forty
six percent between nineteen eighty and that's from fifteen thousand,
one d eighteen to one hundred and twelve thousand seven. Yeah,
(16:25):
and just to get even more specific, Oklahoma incarceraates more
women per capita than any other state. UM And if
we break it down racially, as of Black women have
been incarcerated at nearly three times the rate of white women,
and Hispanic women were incarcerated at one point six times
(16:46):
the rate of white women. And even though those are
huge disparities, it's actually narrowed as black women were incarcerated
at six times the rate as white women in two
thousand UM And and just for comparison, though black men
are imprisoned at about twenty two times the rate that
(17:08):
black women are, white men are incarcerated at ten times
the rate of white women and Latino men at sixteen
times the rate. So even though the imprisonment of women
has skyrocketed in the last twenty years, that's only a
small portion of the overall prison population, which is overwhelmingly
(17:30):
male and overwhelmingly black and Latino. And as we'll get
into a little bit deeper in just a second, I mean,
one of the consequences of, you know, having so many
people in prison at any given time is just the
economic hardships that people face, because once you've been to prison,
it's so hard to claw your way back up. And uh,
(17:54):
Dorothy Roberts, who's a professor at the University of Pennsylvania,
writes in the u c l A Law Review that
me ask imprisonment of blacks and Latina's allows the state
to exert direct control over poorly educated, unskilled, and jobless
people who have no place in the market economy because
of racism. It also preserves a racial cast system that
civil rights reforms were supposed to abolish. And one of
(18:18):
the big issues specifically related to the female prison population,
and something that Piper Kerman, who is the real life
Piper Chapman, talks about a lot, is how a third
of prisoners are in for non violent drug offenses. In
other words, these women aren't going out killing, assaulting, robbing.
(18:42):
A lot of times it is as it's portrayed in
the show of women being caught in the wrong place
making poor decisions, mind you, but being in the wrong
place at the wrong time as part of drug deals
that might be going on, and the anishment for it,
in a lot of ways is so much greater than
(19:05):
the crime because once you are in prison, even if
you get out, it's so hard to stay out. But
before we talk about life on the outside, we've got
to talk about two big issues facing women on the
inside that Orange is the New Black doesn't focus in
on too much, the first of which is sexual assault. Right,
(19:26):
sexual abuse by guards is much more likely to happen
in women's prisons, and one prison that is focused on
a lot is the Denver Women's Correctional Facility, which has
the highest sexual assault rate in the nation, with ten
point seven percent of inmates claiming sexual misconduct. And it's
should be noted that the national average is two point
(19:49):
four and that's at least of women who are even
reporting this, because there are plenty of offenders who are
scared to report sexual assault or rape for fear of retribution.
In and to give you an idea of how sexual
abuse by guards compares to the women's prison population versus
men's prisons, more than three fourths of all reported staff
(20:13):
sexual misconduct involves women victimized by male correctional officers. And
we see a little bit of that portrayal in Orange
is the New Black, but it it pales in comparison
to what these statistics indicate. And even before these women
(20:34):
end up in prison, a lot of times they have
already survived some kind of sexual abuse. For percent of
women in prison our survivors of physical and sexual abuse, right,
And when you think about what that does to people,
I mean a lot of times that does put you
on a path where you are more susceptible to you know,
a lifestyle that involves drugs or or puts you in
(20:56):
you know, bad life situations. And so you know, if
you end up in prison and an abuse is what
you've known, and you just continue to be physically or
sexually abused, it can be hard to get past that. Yeah,
And and and thinking about the attendant mental health issues
that are coming into prison along with these women who
(21:16):
have already encountered so much hardship. Women in state prison
in two thousand four had a mental health problem. But
are those kinds of things being addressed while they're in
jail while they're in prison, Probably not, because the system
is completely overworked and totally flawed, and there are not
(21:38):
dedicated resources to actually making sure that these women are
in good and healthy shape inside and out to be
prepared to live a life away from crime, right And
they honestly can't even get away from the prison culture
when they are giving birth. One and thirty three women
(22:00):
and in federal prisons are pregnant, and shackling these women
when they give birth is still legal in thirty two states.
And I mean this is a practice that the American
Medical Association calls medically hazardous and barbaric. Yeah, I was
astounded to learn that Illinois became the first state to
pass a law banning shackling during childbirth in nine nine.
(22:23):
Only then did we start saying, huh, there seems to
be something a little bit wrong with a woman who
was giving birth being handcuffed, her hands handcuffed to the
bed frame, and her feet being handcuffed to the bedframe,
And as soon as that baby is delivered, it is
probably taken away from her. There's one prisoner who recounted
(22:44):
in an ABC News story about this how she gave
birth with her hands, hands and feet handcuffed and wasn't
able to even contact her baby until seventy days later.
And she didn't her husband was not allowed in the
hospital room. It was just a guard there with her.
And even though Illinois, for instance, has outlawed shackling, it
(23:06):
doesn't mean that it's stopped. Because there's recently a four
point one million dollars settlement for eighty Chicago inmates who
are shackled between two thousand seven and two thousand ten,
it's still happening now. A two thousand seven anti shackling
policy was enacted in the Federal Bureau of Prisons, but
not it should be noted on a statewide level. And
(23:29):
even if you aren't pregnant in prison, an overwhelming majority
of the female prison population are also mothers. Around two
thirds of women are a hundred and twenty thousand women
in prison have children. And and what effects does this
have on the children? Not a good one, not surprisingly no.
(23:51):
And you know, the foster care system exploded in a
parallel fashion to the explosion of the prison population. So
the fact that, I mean, it's not just women, you know,
it's not just mothers, it's any any child whose parent
or parents have been in prison are more likely to
suffer negative effects. But yeah, the the foster more more
(24:12):
kids are going into foster care as more parents are
going in to prison. And so according to Pew Charitable
Trust report, one in every twenty eight children in the
United States has a parent in jail or prison. But
when you crystallize that down along racial lines, for African
American children, that number is one in nine and for
(24:33):
Hispanic children that's one in twenty eight, whereas one in
fifty seven White children have a parent in jail or prison.
And we should also note that on a population wide basis,
there are more women in prison with kids than men
in prison with kids. And a lot of times, because
(24:54):
women end up being the primary caregiver, having that mom
in prison does have such a debilitating effect a lot
of times for these kids. Not to say that if
you know a mom is involved in drug abuse or
is living in an unsafe environment, that that that's a
good thing for the kid, but it's but it's like
(25:15):
it's such it's yet another argument for rehabilitating rather than
just incarcerating. Right well, along these same lines, one horrifying
thing that came to light several months ago was the
issue of sterilization of women who give birth while they're
in prison. Um. This is coming from the Center for
(25:37):
Investigative Reporting. California prisons have sterilized nearly two and fifty
women over the past few decades, and nearly a hundred
and fifty of those were between two thousand and six
and ten. And they talked to oh B g U
I N. James Heinrich, who's in this California prison, and
his defense is kind of chilling. He says that spin
(26:00):
ending money to sterilize these women is better than spending
money on welfare for these unwanted children as they procreate more. Yeah,
and and you know, and so the the issue behind this,
the controversy, it's it's not like these women are saying, hey,
would you mind a lot of times this is its coercion,
it's forced, it's you know. This one woman's account was that,
(26:23):
you know, as she was getting closer and closer to
her due date, this Heinrich, this Dr Heinrich was like,
you know, you should really think about it. Are you
gonna do it, You're gonna do it, We're gonna do it, right,
And so, you know, the day came and he, you know,
just went ahead and did it. That's horrifying because it's
so indicative of how a lot of times people men, women,
kids alike who end up in the criminal justice system
(26:47):
for whatever reason, ceased to be a person, right, and
they just become a statistic and they become a problem,
you know. And yeah, it is expensive to pay for
people to be in jail. It's about sixty dollars a
year to pay for of tax payer money to pay
for one woman who's in prison. And that's insane. But
(27:08):
that's not the problem of you know, it's it's a
it's a system wide problem. I feel like that's a
top down issue sterilization. Treating those women like animals in
a lot of ways is certainly not going to stop
that cycle, right, And it's it's just it was so horrifying,
partially because you know, this country does have a history
(27:29):
of doing that, but doing it particularly to people of color.
And so to hear the story that California prisons have
so recently still been forcing women or coercing women into it.
It's that is eye opening, and that doesn't change the
fact that there are still what two thirds of women
(27:49):
in prison who go into prison already with kids, and
those kids aren't heightened risk first getting in trouble at school, depression,
and then ending up in jail. So it really is cyclical,
which leads us to the problem with recidivism of leaving
and getting right back, because roughly four and ten adult
(28:12):
American offenders will return to prison within three years of
their release, according to a two thousand eleven report from
the Pew Charitable Trusts. Right, and so this is going
back to the tasty character on Orange is the New
Black when she does talk about how much she had
to deal with and what landed her back in prison,
because prisoners simply don't just walk out. Um, you have
(28:36):
all sorts of parole and probation fees, jail book in fees,
jail per d ms for pre trialed attention, presentenced report fees,
just so much, so many little rules and regulations and
so much big money that you have to deal with
once you get released from jail. And if, for instance,
you have a felony drug conviction, you're ineligible for housing assistance.
(28:58):
And I think that the how thing issue was one
thing that landed Tasty back in jail and the show
she had nowhere to go, she had nowhere to sleep?
What are you going to do? Um? And only about
ten p of inmates attend educational, vocational or treatment programs
on a given day, not necessarily because they don't want to,
(29:19):
but because those rehabilitational programs are often not offered, probably
because there's not money for it, there aren't resources, and
the way that we often dehumanize the people who need
those kinds of resources. And it's unfortunate because research from
(29:40):
Pew and other sources have shown the benefits monetary and
otherwise that are reaped when you install educational, vocational, et
cetera kinds of training programs for prisoners. Because Kerman real
life Piper talked about how you know, she did attend
some of the class this even though she herself had
(30:02):
a man and a job waiting for her when she
got out of prison. You know, she she talked about
going to some of those quote unquote classes and how
she went to a housing class. You know where people
have questions about like how do I get an apartment,
how do I pay rent? Like how do I do this?
And that? But they were teaching them about home repair
and applying siting to the side of your house or
you know, just really random things like that where it's like, well,
(30:24):
this isn't helping anyone. It's not real life, you know,
reality based teaching. Yeah, and in prison vocation programs for instance,
like preparing people to get jobs, which is really really
hard if you are a felon. Especially, those kinds of
programs produced net benefits of over thirteen dollars per offender
(30:48):
or over twelve dollars for every dollar invested, and well
net a drop in recidivism. So that's just one example
of how the system could not only help these people
but also help stop the cycle that has led to
this overwhelming like metasticizing prison population where prisons are in
(31:14):
jails are now being outsourced to private companies, for profit companies.
We don't have room for our prison population in the
United States. Isn't that crazy to think about that we
arrest so many people and have no place to put them. Well,
I mean, you know, I'm saying this from a privileged position, obviously,
(31:34):
but it doesn't it seem like it's common sense. Two
and I realized this is moving a mountain. It doesn't
seem like it's common sense to put more effort and
money into community programs things to actually help people, whether
you're someone who has been in jail or or not,
but to help strengthen communities and educate people so that
(31:55):
they don't cycle back. Yeah, I mean, it's it's it's
much a comprehensive problem that you could talk about, from
the way that prisons are set up all the way
to how our laws are established. And I mean there
have been, um, there has been recent news about eliminating
(32:16):
mandatory minimum sentences for drug offenses, which would cut down
a lot on all of these massive numbers of drug
offenders who are currently behind bars. Um. And then you
take it back even further to education, keeping kids in school,
keeping families intact, etcetera. You know, Yeah, it's the problem
(32:41):
of our exploding prisons is bigger than those prisons for sure, exactly. UM.
And to me, the if there is good news, UM,
it's that there are people like Piper Kerman who are
really trying to shine a light on these issues. I
think it's a good thing that, even though it might
(33:04):
not be the most realistic portrayal of women's prison. I
think that it's great that Gingi Cohen made Orange is
the New Black, and I'm glad that it has hit
such a cultural nerve and that people are asking these
questions of, oh, well, what's what's it like in real life?
And I think the reason why we're so curious to
know how it applies to real life because it highlights
(33:26):
these women as real people and not just oh oh,
they're just prisoners, are just offenders, they're just criminals. Keep
them away from me. Well. There's a point in one
of the episodes where Red is talking to Natasha Lean's character, um,
and you know, Natasha Leone is saying something and Red
is like, well, you know, what are the what are
(33:49):
the taxpayers care? They don't care. You know, we're eating
this junk because they're just trying to watch with the
bottom line is, you know, we're the bad guys. And
I think I think there is that attitude of like, well,
I don't care about what anything is like in prison
for prisoners because they're prisoners. They're bad guys. And it's like, well,
but you have to look at the cultural effect, the
societal effect that all of this is having exactly um
(34:13):
And can I close off with a really long quote
from Piper Kerman please please who after after learning more
about her and what she does and how she uses
her now very elevated platform to advocate for those women
that she was imprisoned with and who are in prison
right now, I have so much respect for her. Um.
(34:35):
And she was talking to the Washington Post about the
current state of the women's prison population and she says,
I think that women in prison are really emblematic of typical,
low level, non violent offenders. That is a giant growth
area in terms of our prison system. Over the last
thirty years. We're putting people in prison who we never
would have put in prison before. And there's a staggering
(34:56):
social cost when we talk about the families, but also
it costs of sixty dollars a year and that adds
up really quickly. And we're talking about someone who was
not this prominent threat to safety. It's just a policy
and that's it. And families and communities are being destroyed
because of it. Yeah, So what can people do if
they want to help out, if they are my if
(35:18):
they are as concerned about what life is really like
in women's prisons and in jails and prisons in general.
What what can people do to help out? Well, there
is the Women's Prison Association, which is what Piper Kerman
is affiliated with. That's at w p A online dot org.
And then there is this Sentencing Project which we referenced
(35:41):
earlier and that is at Sentencing Project dot org. So
now I want to hear from you, mom Step of
Discovery dot com is where you can send your emails
thoughts on Orange as the new black women's prison, the
criminal justice system. I know we through a lot of
information at you for this one, but it's a really
big one to tackle, So we want to hear all
(36:04):
of your thoughts mom Stuff at Discovery dot com. You
can also hit us up on Facebook or tweet us
at mom Stuff podcast. And we've got a couple of
letters to share. And now back to our letters. Well,
since we're about to wrap up our special series on
lean in women, work in the Will to Lead by
Sheryl Sandberg, who want to share a couple of letters
(36:26):
from our episode on the workplace fear Factor. This is
a letter from Cynthia. She says, I'm a chemistry professor
at a large public university. I have always felt like
it was a complete accident that I was accepted to
a top graduate program. I would get so worried about
it that I wouldn't participate in the extremely important study
groups my first year, instead choosing to cry over my
(36:48):
intelligible books alone. Later, I found that many of my classmates,
male and female, felt the same. However, we women would
over prepare and obsessed to the point that it was
detrimental to our health. My graduate advisor, another woman who
admits to strong impostor syndrome, taught me to fake it
until I make it. Well, I've now made it, and
every day I feel more and more like I deserve it.
(37:10):
I've worked my butt off, Darnett, and I'm a great
chemist because of it. She says, keep up your good work.
I love your podcast, so thank you, Cynthia, and keep
up your chemistry. It's very cool. Well, I've go on
here from Becca subject line impostor in the laboratory. She writes,
I'm a recent college graduate who was fortunate enough to
land a fantastic job in a research lab straight out
(37:32):
of school. I don't admit this to anyone, but I
really only got the job through personal connections. It's true
that this isn't really unusual, but knowing that I didn't
earn the job through merit alone has made me feel
like a total impostor. I am surrounded by intelligent individuals,
and I often doubt my ability to work alongside them.
I'm three months into this job, and I have to
(37:53):
say that this impostor syndrome has been strangely motivational for me.
My first month here was shaky, and I felt really
undeserving of this position. However, I harness that uneasiness and
I have been working really hard to prove that I
belong here. Apparently my hard work is paying off. Last week,
my supervisor told me she was impressed with my work.
Thanks for the great podcast, you too have helped me
(38:15):
through hours of culturing cells, extracting DNA, and countless other
tests that sound more exciting than we really are. So
keep on rocking at Becca and everybody else who's listening.
Mom Stuff at discovery dot com is where you can
send your letters. You can tweet us at mom Stuff Podcast,
find us on Facebook, and follow us on Tumblr where
(38:36):
it's stuff mom Never Told You dot tumblr dot com,
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(39:00):
new videos every week coming out YouTube dot com slash
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for more on this and thousands of other topics is
how Stuff watch dot Com
Welcome to stuff mom never told you. From house to folks,
not color. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Caroline
and I'm Kristen, and you guys might have taken note
of the fact that Kristen and I have been, you know,
encouraging you to go watch Orange Is the New Black
(00:23):
on Netflix. It is a really incredible, compelling show full
of really really colorful characters who have pretty incredible and
again compelling backstories. And when we put out the call
to get episodes suggestions, one of the top requested episodes
(00:43):
was to take a real look at real women in prison. Yeah,
so here you go, contest winner, Orange Is the New
Black versus real life women's prisons. And we're gonna have
to give just summaries of all of these different facets
(01:04):
because there are so many different angles to what life
is really like in women's prisons and who are those women,
those very real women who are incarcerated. Um, but we're
going to do the best we can to give you
a comprehensive snapshot of what life is like in there,
(01:26):
and just for a snapshot as well of Orange as
the New Black. It was created by Genji Cohen, who
also created the show Weeds, which I'm sure is a
favorite among some listeners as well, And it's based on
a memoir by the same name by a woman named
Piper Kerman, who is Piper Chapman in the show. She's
(01:47):
the main character. Yeah, and now Piper Kerman serves as
a communications consultant for a firm in New York and
she also volunteers for the Women's Prison Association and has
since joined their board. Yeah, it's pretty cool how she
has parlayed her experience the year that she spent in prison,
not just to write a best selling memoir and make
(02:09):
some cash off of turning it into a show, but
to really use her platform, her privileged platform, in a
lot of ways to highlight the just horrific conditions that
women are living in in prison and also the injustice,
(02:29):
the rampant injustice that is our criminal justice system that
is keeping not only women in prison, but also getting them,
keeping them in this cycle of incarceration. So let's first
talk about the show. Let's talk about some things. Oh,
and I guess we should say spoiler alerts ahead. If
(02:52):
you have not seen Orange as the New Black, you
might want to watch it before you listen to this
podcast because we're gonna share some is not too many
crazy spoilers, but but still we're gonna fill you in
on the show. Yeah. Um, well, so let's start by
talking about what kind of things the show got right,
(03:13):
because I know, you know, as I'm watching it, I'm like, God,
some of these things seem terrible. Some of them seem
not so bad. For instance, a lot of the women
have great camaraderie. Like, how accurate is this stuff? And
so this is coming from um a piece that Jeff
Smith wrote. He's a former Missouri state senator who resigned
his seat after pleading guilty to two counts of obstruction
(03:35):
of justice, and he spent a year in federal prison.
And we're also getting some of this information from a
story that appeared on the cut from New York Magazine.
They sat down with five formally incarcerated women and talked
about Orange is the New Black and how accurate these
portrayals of women and prisoners are. Yeah, And so some
of the general things that it gets right is that
(03:57):
small things have huge consequence. Is for instance, Smith talks
about how one of his main strategies to stay safe,
as he writes, because he weighs only a hundred and
seventeen pounds. He's a pretty small guy. Was to quietly
give stolen tomatoes and onions to certain powerful inmates, which
effectively helped me build critical alliances. Because what what might
(04:22):
seem like minor infractions or social awkwardness kinds of things
really do have outsized consequences. For instance, in the show,
when you have read essentially starving Piper, he he wasn't
at all surprised by that. He was like, something like
that could absolutely happen. And as a side note with
(04:44):
the whole starvation thing, courts have upheld prisons serving neutral
OAF as punishment and neutral OAF for people who are
not acquainted with it. It's the stuff that Piper was
served when she went into the special housing unit. The shoe,
which is essentially solitary confinement and neutral loaf is what
(05:05):
it sounds like. It's a loaf of stuff that doesn't
taste very good, but contains all of the nutrients necessary
to keep you alive. So it's not quite starving someone
to death. Not yeah, not quite. Another thing that is
accurate is just the fact of having to to kind
(05:28):
of make do with what you have creating something out
of very little. For instance, the kool Aid lip gloss
in the show. I think they made signs at one
point and they didn't have paint, so I think they
used kool Aid for that too. But also using in
the show, they've used Maxi pads as shoes or as
masks for when everybody got sick. Yeah. And then one
(05:52):
big question that a lot of people had was what
about the sexual tension, because the way that I described
Orange as the New Black in my notes is that
it kind of makes it look like women's prison is
a hyper sexual lesbian summer camp with really means psychopathic
counselors um. And the ex prisoners said, yeah, you know,
(06:14):
of course people have urges. But the women also pointed
out that the rampant sexy times that you see on
Orange as the New Black are overblown a bit. It's
not as common for women to be constantly having sex
with other women in prison or jail, right, And they
(06:35):
did get it right. Also that the prison administrators really
do not care about the women as people, and that
discipline can be pretty arbitrary. Also that visitation can be
depressing when when relatives come to visit you in prison, Yeah,
on the one hand, you have Pipers family and friends
(06:56):
coming and it's and it's usually pretty awful because they
don't want to It's like they're in denial that she's
actually in prison, or they're being too gawky about it.
It's like one or the other. And then you have
instances in the show like when um, Diana's mom is
sitting there and she's so angry and just trying to
(07:18):
get information from her boyfriend as to whether or not
he's been sleeping around and just all of the you know,
those those two worlds colliding. Um, so understandably visitation, when
the outside meets the inside, it can certainly breed some discontent. Yeah,
and then um, the whole issue. There was one episode
of Orange just the New Black where um, one woman
(07:41):
big Boo, is upset that her kind of ex girlfriend
is is leaving, And so there's this whole issue of
antagonizing people before they are set to be released in
order to try to get them stuck in jail for longer. Yeah,
and in that case, that someone wanting to keep someone
that they love from leaving. But a lot of times
(08:04):
that's what happens with enemies. You've got to watch out
if you're about to leave, and if you've made an enemy, Uh,
there's a good chance that someone might try to sabotage
your release. And speaking of release, and this is something
we'll talk about in more detail, recidivism happens a lot
when spoiler this is a big spoiler when we see
(08:25):
Tasty come back after she's released and she talks about
how it was basically impossible for her to stay out
of prison. She couldn't do it because she had absolutely
no resources. And that is very true to life, because
ex prisoners are given little to no resources to get
(08:45):
back on their feet, especially if they're felons. Well, so,
what does the show get wrong? What are they gloss
over or not portray accurately. One of those things is
the consequences for talking too much, snitching and crossing racial
lines are actually much harsher than portrayed in the show. Yeah,
for instance, when everybody listens to Piper's boyfriend on the
(09:11):
This American Life type show talking about what she tells
him about her experience in prison and all of the
different people who she's essentially snitching on, and everyone's hearing this,
the retribution for that probably would have been much harsher
in a real women's prison. And even though with race,
(09:33):
even though it's very segregated in the show, there's still
a lot more mixing and crossing of those racial lines
than there probably would be. Yeah, and the whole nudity issue,
I mean, you know, the show opens with shower scenes. Um,
the in actuality, there's a lot less nudity in the
showers because you have to just kind of watch your
(09:54):
back you might get assaulted. Yeah, and that's more true
probably in male prisons. That was thing that Jeff Smith
pointed out in terms of listen, you're really gonna want
to be naked for as short of a time as possible. Um. So, essentially,
what the show gets wrong is that the worse is
so much worse. The bad stuff is so bad, and
(10:19):
so you know, I think that if they were to
portray it as it actually is, the show would almost
be unwatchable. Yeah. But on the bright side, one thing
that I found that is true in prison becoming more
true in prison is that yoga is practiced in a
growing number of prisons. Yeah, because it is a great
(10:41):
way to be active and also to relax, and it's cheap.
A lot of times the people who come into the
prisons to teach the yoga classes are volunteers. Yeah. The
New York Times did a whole piece on this and
talked about how even in men's prison, some of the
guys were really hesitant to go and do something they
(11:01):
might have seen as not being really tough, but that
anecdotally a lot of them report really positive benefits from
a regular yoga practice. So there are yoga jains in prison.
But then on a download again, because really from here
on it kind of all the information that we're going
to offer does get a bit dismal. Um, we should
(11:24):
talk about trans people in prison, because we have Sophia Burst,
who has played so wonderfully by Laverne Cox, who portrays
male to female transgender person who had undergone gender reassignment
surgery and later is denied hormone treatment and is having
to deal with the physical and emotional repercussions from that.
(11:48):
And the situation for trans people who are incarcerated is
really dismal, right, And I think it's reflected pretty well
in that issue that you just mentioned of having her
hormone therapy denied. In reality, sevent of trans people in
prison are denied hormone treatment and often end up in
(12:08):
prison according to their birth sex, which can lead to
a huge amount of severe harassment. Yeah, especially for male
to female pre gender reassignment surgery prisoners who might be
put in a men's prison, that risk of harassment definitely
goes up. Um and just a risk for going to jail,
(12:28):
for being arrested, going to jail, being imprisoned is higher
for trans people compared to the rest of the population.
A report from the National Center for Transgender Equality found
that sixteen percent of trans people surveyed had spent at
least some jail time or prison time because of things
(12:49):
like unemployment. Because the unemployment rate is twice that of
the general population, which is often related to harassment, which
is related to being trans gender, and so because of
that high rate of unemployment, they might turn to things
like sex work, drug trades, and also be homeless. Right
and sixteen Also another sixteen six of the respondents who
(13:13):
had been in prison or jail reported being physically assaulted.
Fifteen percent of responds who had been in jail reported
they had been sexually assaulted. So, in a way, the
Orange is the new Black character Sophia has I mean
aside from the hormone treatment issue, that portrays the situation
for a trans prisoner and almost the best possible scenario, right.
(13:35):
I mean, she is still like, you know, verbally attacked,
and she still deals with a whole lot of people,
you know, just saying terrible things to her. But she
is not in a men's prison, right And the a
side note, her hair salon probably wouldn't exist in a
real woman's love her hair and the show, Like I swear,
(13:57):
I just watched an episode last night. She's wearing this
like headband and her hair is all braated, and I
just I was like, I wish I could do that
to my hair, but it's not thick enough anyway. Total tangent.
But another nightmare situation that we've already mentioned is the
special housing unit the Shoe, the solitary confinement where Piper goes.
When she was dancing a little provocatively and Sam Healy
(14:19):
got a little upset with her, This is where inmates
are separated from the rest of the population and they
have very limited activity. Yeah, and about five point seven
percent of federal prisoners, around ten thousand people are in
the Shoe at any given moment, and with the solitary conditions.
(14:41):
Some people have argued that the shoe constitutes a specific
form of torture. Yeah, I mean, I I can't imagine.
I mean, and and in the show, Piper is only
in there for about forty eight hours, but I mean,
she was already you know, her character is already losing it.
I can't, I can't imagine. Well, and then that relates
back to the whole issue of arbitrary discipline, where you
(15:03):
don't know exactly what you have to do to stay
out of the shoe. If you simply cross someone in
a way that they don't like, then you might be
thrown in there. And I mean, and who's to say
how long? You know, how long that you'll be in there? Right? Um,
So let's take a deeper look away from Orange Is
(15:23):
the New Black the show and into women's prisons. And
I cannot recommend the article that we found over at
Bitch Magazine that did just this. It didn't end depth
look at how Orange Is the New Black compares to
real life. And uh, this is a major source for
a lot of these statistics that we're gonna be tossing out.
(15:44):
So for an idea of just how bad the situation
is in terms of imprisonment in the United States. The
US is home to five percent of the world's population
and twenty five per cent of the world's prison and
mates and women are this country's fastest growing prison population.
(16:05):
And according to the Sentencing Project, the number of women
incarcerated in the US increased by six hundred and forty
six percent between nineteen eighty and that's from fifteen thousand,
one d eighteen to one hundred and twelve thousand seven. Yeah,
(16:25):
and just to get even more specific, Oklahoma incarceraates more
women per capita than any other state. UM And if
we break it down racially, as of Black women have
been incarcerated at nearly three times the rate of white women,
and Hispanic women were incarcerated at one point six times
(16:46):
the rate of white women. And even though those are
huge disparities, it's actually narrowed as black women were incarcerated
at six times the rate as white women in two
thousand UM And and just for comparison, though black men
are imprisoned at about twenty two times the rate that
(17:08):
black women are, white men are incarcerated at ten times
the rate of white women and Latino men at sixteen
times the rate. So even though the imprisonment of women
has skyrocketed in the last twenty years, that's only a
small portion of the overall prison population, which is overwhelmingly
(17:30):
male and overwhelmingly black and Latino. And as we'll get
into a little bit deeper in just a second, I mean,
one of the consequences of, you know, having so many
people in prison at any given time is just the
economic hardships that people face, because once you've been to prison,
it's so hard to claw your way back up. And uh,
(17:54):
Dorothy Roberts, who's a professor at the University of Pennsylvania,
writes in the u c l A Law Review that
me ask imprisonment of blacks and Latina's allows the state
to exert direct control over poorly educated, unskilled, and jobless
people who have no place in the market economy because
of racism. It also preserves a racial cast system that
civil rights reforms were supposed to abolish. And one of
(18:18):
the big issues specifically related to the female prison population,
and something that Piper Kerman, who is the real life
Piper Chapman, talks about a lot, is how a third
of prisoners are in for non violent drug offenses. In
other words, these women aren't going out killing, assaulting, robbing.
(18:42):
A lot of times it is as it's portrayed in
the show of women being caught in the wrong place
making poor decisions, mind you, but being in the wrong
place at the wrong time as part of drug deals
that might be going on, and the anishment for it,
in a lot of ways is so much greater than
(19:05):
the crime because once you are in prison, even if
you get out, it's so hard to stay out. But
before we talk about life on the outside, we've got
to talk about two big issues facing women on the
inside that Orange is the New Black doesn't focus in
on too much, the first of which is sexual assault. Right,
(19:26):
sexual abuse by guards is much more likely to happen
in women's prisons, and one prison that is focused on
a lot is the Denver Women's Correctional Facility, which has
the highest sexual assault rate in the nation, with ten
point seven percent of inmates claiming sexual misconduct. And it's
should be noted that the national average is two point
(19:49):
four and that's at least of women who are even
reporting this, because there are plenty of offenders who are
scared to report sexual assault or rape for fear of retribution.
In and to give you an idea of how sexual
abuse by guards compares to the women's prison population versus
men's prisons, more than three fourths of all reported staff
(20:13):
sexual misconduct involves women victimized by male correctional officers. And
we see a little bit of that portrayal in Orange
is the New Black, but it it pales in comparison
to what these statistics indicate. And even before these women
(20:34):
end up in prison, a lot of times they have
already survived some kind of sexual abuse. For percent of
women in prison our survivors of physical and sexual abuse, right,
And when you think about what that does to people,
I mean a lot of times that does put you
on a path where you are more susceptible to you know,
a lifestyle that involves drugs or or puts you in
(20:56):
you know, bad life situations. And so you know, if
you end up in prison and an abuse is what
you've known, and you just continue to be physically or
sexually abused, it can be hard to get past that. Yeah,
And and and thinking about the attendant mental health issues
that are coming into prison along with these women who
(21:16):
have already encountered so much hardship. Women in state prison
in two thousand four had a mental health problem. But
are those kinds of things being addressed while they're in
jail while they're in prison, Probably not, because the system
is completely overworked and totally flawed, and there are not
(21:38):
dedicated resources to actually making sure that these women are
in good and healthy shape inside and out to be
prepared to live a life away from crime, right And
they honestly can't even get away from the prison culture
when they are giving birth. One and thirty three women
(22:00):
and in federal prisons are pregnant, and shackling these women
when they give birth is still legal in thirty two states.
And I mean this is a practice that the American
Medical Association calls medically hazardous and barbaric. Yeah, I was
astounded to learn that Illinois became the first state to
pass a law banning shackling during childbirth in nine nine.
(22:23):
Only then did we start saying, huh, there seems to
be something a little bit wrong with a woman who
was giving birth being handcuffed, her hands handcuffed to the
bed frame, and her feet being handcuffed to the bedframe,
And as soon as that baby is delivered, it is
probably taken away from her. There's one prisoner who recounted
(22:44):
in an ABC News story about this how she gave
birth with her hands, hands and feet handcuffed and wasn't
able to even contact her baby until seventy days later.
And she didn't her husband was not allowed in the
hospital room. It was just a guard there with her.
And even though Illinois, for instance, has outlawed shackling, it
(23:06):
doesn't mean that it's stopped. Because there's recently a four
point one million dollars settlement for eighty Chicago inmates who
are shackled between two thousand seven and two thousand ten,
it's still happening now. A two thousand seven anti shackling
policy was enacted in the Federal Bureau of Prisons, but
not it should be noted on a statewide level. And
(23:29):
even if you aren't pregnant in prison, an overwhelming majority
of the female prison population are also mothers. Around two
thirds of women are a hundred and twenty thousand women
in prison have children. And and what effects does this
have on the children? Not a good one, not surprisingly no.
(23:51):
And you know, the foster care system exploded in a
parallel fashion to the explosion of the prison population. So
the fact that, I mean, it's not just women, you know,
it's not just mothers, it's any any child whose parent
or parents have been in prison are more likely to
suffer negative effects. But yeah, the the foster more more
(24:12):
kids are going into foster care as more parents are
going in to prison. And so according to Pew Charitable
Trust report, one in every twenty eight children in the
United States has a parent in jail or prison. But
when you crystallize that down along racial lines, for African
American children, that number is one in nine and for
(24:33):
Hispanic children that's one in twenty eight, whereas one in
fifty seven White children have a parent in jail or prison.
And we should also note that on a population wide basis,
there are more women in prison with kids than men
in prison with kids. And a lot of times, because
(24:54):
women end up being the primary caregiver, having that mom
in prison does have such a debilitating effect a lot
of times for these kids. Not to say that if
you know a mom is involved in drug abuse or
is living in an unsafe environment, that that that's a
good thing for the kid, but it's but it's like
(25:15):
it's such it's yet another argument for rehabilitating rather than
just incarcerating. Right well, along these same lines, one horrifying
thing that came to light several months ago was the
issue of sterilization of women who give birth while they're
in prison. Um. This is coming from the Center for
(25:37):
Investigative Reporting. California prisons have sterilized nearly two and fifty
women over the past few decades, and nearly a hundred
and fifty of those were between two thousand and six
and ten. And they talked to oh B g U
I N. James Heinrich, who's in this California prison, and
his defense is kind of chilling. He says that spin
(26:00):
ending money to sterilize these women is better than spending
money on welfare for these unwanted children as they procreate more. Yeah,
and and you know, and so the the issue behind this,
the controversy, it's it's not like these women are saying, hey,
would you mind a lot of times this is its coercion,
it's forced, it's you know. This one woman's account was that,
(26:23):
you know, as she was getting closer and closer to
her due date, this Heinrich, this Dr Heinrich was like,
you know, you should really think about it. Are you
gonna do it, You're gonna do it, We're gonna do it, right,
And so, you know, the day came and he, you know,
just went ahead and did it. That's horrifying because it's
so indicative of how a lot of times people men, women,
kids alike who end up in the criminal justice system
(26:47):
for whatever reason, ceased to be a person, right, and
they just become a statistic and they become a problem,
you know. And yeah, it is expensive to pay for
people to be in jail. It's about sixty dollars a
year to pay for of tax payer money to pay
for one woman who's in prison. And that's insane. But
(27:08):
that's not the problem of you know, it's it's a
it's a system wide problem. I feel like that's a
top down issue sterilization. Treating those women like animals in
a lot of ways is certainly not going to stop
that cycle, right, And it's it's just it was so horrifying,
partially because you know, this country does have a history
(27:29):
of doing that, but doing it particularly to people of color.
And so to hear the story that California prisons have
so recently still been forcing women or coercing women into it.
It's that is eye opening, and that doesn't change the
fact that there are still what two thirds of women
(27:49):
in prison who go into prison already with kids, and
those kids aren't heightened risk first getting in trouble at school, depression,
and then ending up in jail. So it really is cyclical,
which leads us to the problem with recidivism of leaving
and getting right back, because roughly four and ten adult
(28:12):
American offenders will return to prison within three years of
their release, according to a two thousand eleven report from
the Pew Charitable Trusts. Right, and so this is going
back to the tasty character on Orange is the New
Black when she does talk about how much she had
to deal with and what landed her back in prison,
because prisoners simply don't just walk out. Um, you have
(28:36):
all sorts of parole and probation fees, jail book in fees,
jail per d ms for pre trialed attention, presentenced report fees,
just so much, so many little rules and regulations and
so much big money that you have to deal with
once you get released from jail. And if, for instance,
you have a felony drug conviction, you're ineligible for housing assistance.
(28:58):
And I think that the how thing issue was one
thing that landed Tasty back in jail and the show
she had nowhere to go, she had nowhere to sleep?
What are you going to do? Um? And only about
ten p of inmates attend educational, vocational or treatment programs
on a given day, not necessarily because they don't want to,
(29:19):
but because those rehabilitational programs are often not offered, probably
because there's not money for it, there aren't resources, and
the way that we often dehumanize the people who need
those kinds of resources. And it's unfortunate because research from
(29:40):
Pew and other sources have shown the benefits monetary and
otherwise that are reaped when you install educational, vocational, et
cetera kinds of training programs for prisoners. Because Kerman real
life Piper talked about how you know, she did attend
some of the class this even though she herself had
(30:02):
a man and a job waiting for her when she
got out of prison. You know, she she talked about
going to some of those quote unquote classes and how
she went to a housing class. You know where people
have questions about like how do I get an apartment,
how do I pay rent? Like how do I do this?
And that? But they were teaching them about home repair
and applying siting to the side of your house or
you know, just really random things like that where it's like, well,
(30:24):
this isn't helping anyone. It's not real life, you know,
reality based teaching. Yeah, and in prison vocation programs for instance,
like preparing people to get jobs, which is really really
hard if you are a felon. Especially, those kinds of
programs produced net benefits of over thirteen dollars per offender
(30:48):
or over twelve dollars for every dollar invested, and well
net a drop in recidivism. So that's just one example
of how the system could not only help these people
but also help stop the cycle that has led to
this overwhelming like metasticizing prison population where prisons are in
(31:14):
jails are now being outsourced to private companies, for profit companies.
We don't have room for our prison population in the
United States. Isn't that crazy to think about that we
arrest so many people and have no place to put them. Well,
I mean, you know, I'm saying this from a privileged position, obviously,
(31:34):
but it doesn't it seem like it's common sense. Two
and I realized this is moving a mountain. It doesn't
seem like it's common sense to put more effort and
money into community programs things to actually help people, whether
you're someone who has been in jail or or not,
but to help strengthen communities and educate people so that
(31:55):
they don't cycle back. Yeah, I mean, it's it's it's
much a comprehensive problem that you could talk about, from
the way that prisons are set up all the way
to how our laws are established. And I mean there
have been, um, there has been recent news about eliminating
(32:16):
mandatory minimum sentences for drug offenses, which would cut down
a lot on all of these massive numbers of drug
offenders who are currently behind bars. Um. And then you
take it back even further to education, keeping kids in school,
keeping families intact, etcetera. You know, Yeah, it's the problem
(32:41):
of our exploding prisons is bigger than those prisons for sure, exactly. UM.
And to me, the if there is good news, UM,
it's that there are people like Piper Kerman who are
really trying to shine a light on these issues. I
think it's a good thing that, even though it might
(33:04):
not be the most realistic portrayal of women's prison. I
think that it's great that Gingi Cohen made Orange is
the New Black, and I'm glad that it has hit
such a cultural nerve and that people are asking these
questions of, oh, well, what's what's it like in real life?
And I think the reason why we're so curious to
know how it applies to real life because it highlights
(33:26):
these women as real people and not just oh oh,
they're just prisoners, are just offenders, they're just criminals. Keep
them away from me. Well. There's a point in one
of the episodes where Red is talking to Natasha Lean's character, um,
and you know, Natasha Leone is saying something and Red
is like, well, you know, what are the what are
(33:49):
the taxpayers care? They don't care. You know, we're eating
this junk because they're just trying to watch with the
bottom line is, you know, we're the bad guys. And
I think I think there is that attitude of like, well,
I don't care about what anything is like in prison
for prisoners because they're prisoners. They're bad guys. And it's like, well,
but you have to look at the cultural effect, the
societal effect that all of this is having exactly um
(34:13):
And can I close off with a really long quote
from Piper Kerman please please who after after learning more
about her and what she does and how she uses
her now very elevated platform to advocate for those women
that she was imprisoned with and who are in prison
right now, I have so much respect for her. Um.
(34:35):
And she was talking to the Washington Post about the
current state of the women's prison population and she says,
I think that women in prison are really emblematic of typical,
low level, non violent offenders. That is a giant growth
area in terms of our prison system. Over the last
thirty years. We're putting people in prison who we never
would have put in prison before. And there's a staggering
(34:56):
social cost when we talk about the families, but also
it costs of sixty dollars a year and that adds
up really quickly. And we're talking about someone who was
not this prominent threat to safety. It's just a policy
and that's it. And families and communities are being destroyed
because of it. Yeah, So what can people do if
they want to help out, if they are my if
(35:18):
they are as concerned about what life is really like
in women's prisons and in jails and prisons in general.
What what can people do to help out? Well, there
is the Women's Prison Association, which is what Piper Kerman
is affiliated with. That's at w p A online dot org.
And then there is this Sentencing Project which we referenced
(35:41):
earlier and that is at Sentencing Project dot org. So
now I want to hear from you, mom Step of
Discovery dot com is where you can send your emails
thoughts on Orange as the new black women's prison, the
criminal justice system. I know we through a lot of
information at you for this one, but it's a really
big one to tackle, So we want to hear all
(36:04):
of your thoughts mom Stuff at Discovery dot com. You
can also hit us up on Facebook or tweet us
at mom Stuff podcast. And we've got a couple of
letters to share. And now back to our letters. Well,
since we're about to wrap up our special series on
lean in women, work in the Will to Lead by
Sheryl Sandberg, who want to share a couple of letters
(36:26):
from our episode on the workplace fear Factor. This is
a letter from Cynthia. She says, I'm a chemistry professor
at a large public university. I have always felt like
it was a complete accident that I was accepted to
a top graduate program. I would get so worried about
it that I wouldn't participate in the extremely important study
groups my first year, instead choosing to cry over my
(36:48):
intelligible books alone. Later, I found that many of my classmates,
male and female, felt the same. However, we women would
over prepare and obsessed to the point that it was
detrimental to our health. My graduate advisor, another woman who
admits to strong impostor syndrome, taught me to fake it
until I make it. Well, I've now made it, and
every day I feel more and more like I deserve it.
(37:10):
I've worked my butt off, Darnett, and I'm a great
chemist because of it. She says, keep up your good work.
I love your podcast, so thank you, Cynthia, and keep
up your chemistry. It's very cool. Well, I've go on
here from Becca subject line impostor in the laboratory. She writes,
I'm a recent college graduate who was fortunate enough to
land a fantastic job in a research lab straight out
(37:32):
of school. I don't admit this to anyone, but I
really only got the job through personal connections. It's true
that this isn't really unusual, but knowing that I didn't
earn the job through merit alone has made me feel
like a total impostor. I am surrounded by intelligent individuals,
and I often doubt my ability to work alongside them.
I'm three months into this job, and I have to
(37:53):
say that this impostor syndrome has been strangely motivational for me.
My first month here was shaky, and I felt really
undeserving of this position. However, I harness that uneasiness and
I have been working really hard to prove that I
belong here. Apparently my hard work is paying off. Last week,
my supervisor told me she was impressed with my work.
Thanks for the great podcast, you too have helped me
(38:15):
through hours of culturing cells, extracting DNA, and countless other
tests that sound more exciting than we really are. So
keep on rocking at Becca and everybody else who's listening.
Mom Stuff at discovery dot com is where you can
send your letters. You can tweet us at mom Stuff Podcast,
find us on Facebook, and follow us on Tumblr where
(38:36):
it's stuff mom Never Told You dot tumblr dot com,
and check out our pictures on Instagram. That's right, We're
on Instagram at stuff Mom Never Told You, And finally,
don't forget to tune in this Friday to the final
chapter and our exploration on Cheryl Sandberg's book Lean In,
and don't forget to tune in over on YouTube our
(39:00):
new videos every week coming out YouTube dot com slash
stuff Mom, Never Told You, and don't Forget to subscribe
for more on this and thousands of other topics is
how Stuff watch dot Com
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