Ms. Magazine just published an essay written by one of them women who served time in prison alongside Piper Kerman. After a relatively short prison sentence, Kerman wrote about the experience in her book Orange is the New Black: My Year in a Women’s Prison, the book the popular television show of a similar name was based on.
Beatrice Codianni, the former prisoner who penned the essay, says the television shop changed more than the main character’s last name. Codianni said that while the book was an accurate portrayal of Danbury, Litchfield’s real-world inspirtaion, she had to give up on the Netflix series two seasons in.
You should read the whole thing, but here’s a snippet:
When I learned that there would be a Netflix series based on OITNB, I couldn’t wait to watch it. I stopped watching it early on in the second season though, because sadly, the series doesn’t reflect the women in the camp as I know them.
For example, the visiting room scenes do not adequately portray the pain that permeates the room as mothers and their children are forced to sit side-by-side and not touch or comfort each other. The Bureau of Prisons used to hold a family day where children and their parents could spend hours together in a less restrictive environment and touch and play. This humane visitation day has since been cancelled by the BOP.The series doesn’t show how many nonviolent women who were given harsh mandatory-minimum sentences are denied the right to become mothers because their childbearing years were stolen from them. The series doesn’t show how a male gynecologist was so rough giving pelvic exams to women who had not been sexually active in years that women refused PAP smears because of the pain he inflicted.
The series doesn’t show how in 2013, despite the BOP’s “mission” of keeping people in prison within 500 miles from their homes, the BOP decided to shut down the only federal correctional institution for women in the northeast to convert it to a male prison. The women were being sent to Alabama—over 1,100 miles away.
This article appears in Jul 16-22, 2015.
it isn’t surprising that an inmate of that place maintains that the show does not reflect the true reality of prison life. it’s not surprising that another convict tries to cash in by presenting a reality/drama that has as less truth to it than a Disney cartoon. No one cares. Producing movies like Wolf of Wall Street and any other forms of entertainment
written by the participant, make no mention of the victims of these people. I do take issue about who is responsible for being incarcerated during ‘child bearing years’. The consequences of personal behavior make looking into a mirror the most accurate way of determining blame
@ladderflappy … I guess you didn’t read the Ms magazine piece or watch any of the series episodes, as anxious as you were to pass on the tired conservative conceit of “personal responsibility.” I think the more important take away is that women behind bars in the American experiment with mass incarceration, the majority of them non-violent offenders, are still human beings with human needs and dreams, whose stories are often colored with genuine pathos and sometimes tragedy. Maybe we should reflect a bit on the societal (human) cost of these policies before piling on with yet another round of shallow, self-righteous shaming.