SALON

Sunday, Apr 11, 2010 3:01 PM UTC

“Orange Is the New Black”: What’s a nice girl like you doing in prison?

Piper Kerman talks about her year behind bars on drug charges, and what we get wrong about female inmates

By

Topics: Memoirs, Our Picks, Books,

When I first met Piper Kerman in the mid-’90s, I knew her as the vivacious, whip-smart girlfriend of my friend Larry Smith. What I didn’t know was that Piper had a secret.

A few years earlier, shortly after graduating from Smith, she had been involved with a woman who was a drug trafficker. For a few heady months, Piper traveled with her girlfriend on her dangerous business and had even, on one occasion, couriered money for her.

Eventually, however, the past caught up with Piper. For her youthful transgression, she was sent to federal prison in Danbury for a year. Now, five years after her release, she’s written an honest, insightful and often very funny book about her experiences — the wryly titled “Orange Is the New Black.”

A few days ago, far from the confines of correctional facility cuisine, we sat down together at New York’s City Bakery to talk about her book and the truths and misconceptions about the American penal system.

Let’s start with the obvious. How’d a nice girl like you get yourself in such a pickle in the first place? Did you ever think you’d wind up in jail?

I knew what we were doing was illegal. But the more you see people not getting caught, the less convinced you are it’ll happen, whether it’s Enron traders or street dealers. And the thing about young people is that your risk calculus is off-kilter. I was in denial about the relationship between my actions and what would happen to other people — whether it was people who were addicted to drugs or my own nearest and dearest. That’s at the heart at any crime — your own indifference to the consequences.

When you finally got out, you could have put the whole episode behind you. Why did you decide to write about it?

There was no question that folks were interested in the story. When I came home, every person I knew or met said, “Tell me more.” But my story relates to the story of millions and millions of Americans. There are two million people in jail right now, and seven million on probation and parole. Then there are their children, their parents and their community.

My experience was so different than what’s typically depicted about prisons. I wanted to offer a more complete, complex picture. Most of the pop culture is about men. It’s all about “Oz.” There’s the expectation that prison is full of irredeemably violent people. The prison I was in was full of ordinary moms and grandmas and young girls convicted of nonviolent crimes.

What surprised you most about prison?

I went in being warned not to make friends. Now I can’t conceive how you could get through it without friends. You need other prisoners to get you toothpaste, to get you soap. There’s this lag time between arriving in prison and getting those basics, so I had almost a month where I was completely reliant on other prisoners. And other prisoners were very generous and kind.

People think the prisoners are scary. What you’re scared of is the guards and losing the tiny privileges you have. They can take away your visiting rights or your cubicle. They can go into your locker. You have your tiny world, and they can take that all away. The determination to hold on to your individuality and your community is very important.

What do you think needs to change about the way the penal system is currently run?

Low-level offenders make up a big portion of the prison offenders. In 1980 there were only 500,000 Americans in prison. Over the last 30 years, the government has being using prison to try to address problems of poverty. Plenty of rich people commit crimes, but most of the people in prison are poor. They come from the most fragile communities. Prison has not worked well as a solution to poverty.

But now because of the economy, states are being forced to figure out smarter ways of dealing with crime. If we shift resources toward probation and parole, it would be potentiality cost-effective. There are sanctions in the community that can happen. Michigan, for example, has reduced the number of people they’re sending to prison and not seeing any increase in crime. California, meanwhile, is still spending $47,000 a year per prisoner.

But if you have young people in trouble and you succeed in getting them on the right path, that’s not just humane, it also yields a big reward to our society as a whole. The system is a warehouse. And the biggest battle for prisoners is just to not to turn into a box on the shelf, and stay human.

Mary Elizabeth Williams

Mary Elizabeth Williams is a staff writer for Salon and the author of "Gimme Shelter: My Three Years Searching for the American Dream." Follow her on Twitter: @embeedub. More Mary Elizabeth Williams.

Next Article

Related Stories

More Related Stories

Featured Slide Shows

The week in 10 pics

close X
  • Share on Twitter
  • Share on Facebook
  • Thumbnails
  • Fullscreen
  • 1 of 11
  • Lisa Montgomery embraces her nephew Thursday after a tornado tore apart her home in Cleburne, Texas. The twister killed six people and destroyed entire swaths of the North Texas town.
    Credit: AP/LM Otero

  • Jack McMahon, the defense attorney for abortion doctor Kermit Gosnell, speaks outside the Criminal Justice Center Philadelphia Tuesday. His client was convicted of killing three babies in his clinic, and will serve multiple life sentences.
    Credit: AP/Matt Rourke

  • A photo taken Monday captures Vice President Joe Biden's response to a Milwaukee second-grader's innovative proposal to end America's epidemic of gun violence. This guy!
    Credit: AP/Jenny Aicher

  • Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., flanked by a grouper-eyed Michele Bachmann, addresses the IRS' admission that it targeted Tea Party groups in advance of the 2012 election. In an op-ed for CNN Thursday, the Kentucky senator slammed the president for his faux outrage.
    Credit: AP/Molly Riley

  • Ousted IRS chief Steven Miller is sworn in on Capitol Hill Friday. Miller testified before the House Ways and Means Committee on the extra scrutiny the agency gave conservative groups applying for tax-exempt status.
    Credit: AP/J. Scott Applewhite

  • Attorney General Eric Holder pauses as he testifies on Capitol Hill before the House Judiciary Committee Wednesday. Holder is under fire, among other things, for the Justice Department's gathering of phone records at the Associated Press.
    Credit: AP/Carolyn Kaster

  • O.J. Simpson sits during an evidentiary hearing at Clark County District Court in Las Vegas, Nev., Thursday. Simpson, who is currently serving a nine-to-33-year sentence in state prison for armed robbery and kidnapping, is using a writ of habeas corpus to seek a new trial.
    Credit: AP/Las Vegas Review-Journal/Jeff Scheid

  • Major Tom to ground control: On Sunday astronaut Chris Hadfield recorded the first music video from space, a cover of David Bowie's "Space Oddity."
    Credit: AP/NASA/Chris Hadfield

  • When it rains it pours. President Barack Obama speaks during a news conference Thursday with Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, inexplicably inspiring an #umbrellagate Twitter meme.
    Credit: AP/Jacquelyn Martin

  • A smoke plume rises high above a road block at the intersection of County A and Ross Road east of Solon Springs, Wis., Tuesday. No injuries were reported, but the the wildfire caused evacuations across northwestern Wisconsin.
    Credit: AP/The Duluth News-Tribune/Clint Austin

  • Recent Slide Shows

  • Share on Twitter
  • Share on Facebook
  • Thumbnails
  • Fullscreen
  • 1 of 11

Related Videos

Comments

 38 Comments

Comment Preview

Your name will appear as username

You may use these HTML tags and attributes: <a href=""> <b> <em> <strong> <i> <blockquote>

follow salon

Most Read

Popular on Reddit

links from salon.com

vote
New Yorker launches tool by Aaron Swartz to protect leaks: Strongbox, co-created by the late technologist, is an open-source drop box for leaked documents
236 points237 points | 8 comments
vote
New Yorker launches tool by Aaron Swartz to protect leaks: Strongbox, co-created by the persecuted late technologist, is an open-source drop box for leaked documents
165 points166 points | 1 comment
vote
Loaded terminology like "entitlements" and "welfare" skews the debate and alters America. How right-wingers use semantic tricks to kill government.
147 points148 points | 39 comments
vote
Obstruction will ruin the GOP: Playing politics and abusing the system can excite the extremes, but it's a recipe for long-term political disaster
50 points51 points | 8 comments
vote
How right-wingers use semantic tricks to kill government -- "...much of the U.S. economic security support system consists of subsidies for the affluent in the form of tax breaks, like those for private retirement savings plans such as 401(k)s and private employer-provided health insurance."
31 points32 points | 3 comments

From Around the Web

Presented by Scribol
listener_new_rect The Listener: So long, Sookie Stackhouse

Recommendations