That is really the main reason why this prisoner’s experience is nothing like the show.
The show is mostly accurate to what happens in the book it’s based on, which is a true story. The excerpt of the interview about the kitchen being inaccurate is probably true. The author never worked in the kitchen so the book doesn’t explain the kitchen system in any detail, from what I remember of it.
Next thing you will tell me mobsters don’t see therapists.
An interesting idea, not implausible. I’m sticking with the traditional “ratings” as the motive, though.
I read the Washington City Paper article, and I read the comment thread here, and I prefer the WCP article.
In other words…
“Orange is the new black is totally inaccurate because it doesn’t resemble my incarceration.”
You could ask a million men and women who have been in jail about their life in prison and you will get a milllion different realities. OITNB is just one of them.
Minor spoiler alert, regarding characters’ backstories - skip my comment if you care about having that sort of thing spoiled (though it’s only really incidental to the main plot of the show).
It’s mostly drug offenses and theft, at least of the people for whom the backstories have been given, if memory serves. There’s a handful of inmates who would otherwise be in max security prisons (bank robbers, murderers) who are deemed to be no longer a threat because they are all senior citizens. The only non-senior-citizen murderer that I’m aware of in the prison is Pennsatucky.
And she had a kick ass lawyer paid for by the pro-life movement
Yup, I posted before finishing my thought, which was “and she was a darling of the Christian Right, so that’s probably how she ended up in minimum security”.
really? Cause I don’t think anyone views the proceedings as white wash.
It may create a moral comfort with it, but it doesn’t read like propaganda at all.
Hmm. You know, now that I visualize it, if somebody did that as a mashup and posted it online, I would not even know it was fake.
To be fair OITNB depicts a Federal Prison like the kind of place Martha Stewart went to. There’s a reason it’s called ClubFed, and have documentation that Martha received certain perks.To be sure your average Prison is a humanity degrading hell hole filled with the homeless, various kinds of drug addicts and the mentally ill. IMO Jenji walks a good line and even tries to show the difference between the different kinds of Prisons out there. You see the Juxtaposition in the first episode of season 2 when Piper goes to Chicago.
Yes, there are different levels of incarceration, sometimes even within the same jail. (An acquaintance of mine did a month in work release in the county jail, and he described it as being like a cross between summer camp and a poorly-maintained college dorm; he said that the punishment for just about any infraction was doing your time in real jail.) The quality of jail can also vary from state to state.
I thought the fresh produce and stuff was from Red having sources for it, but I may be mistaken. I’m not sure this writer is properly taking into account what it’s like at a very corrupt prison run by an embezzler, etc.
I’ve seen somewhat similar craziness due to corrupt circumstances.
I wasn’t in prison, but I did short stints in jails (youthful exuberance nonviolent offenses) in a couple of little towns in the Southeast and I witnessed a combination of hilarious, shocking and depressing things at those corrupt jailhouses including what I can only describe as modern day slavery at one of them.
I’ve seen for myself how ridiculous incarceration can be when the people running the facilities are a combo of greedy and corrupt. I couldn’t believe some of the leeway some of the “trustees” got in one of the jails. It almost felt like a corrupt Andy Taylor was running the show at certain points.
So yeah, considering I’ve seen everything from a draconian, racist hell that secretly enabled modern day slavery to another place where you could blatantly hand over cash to leave the jail and come back, etc. - I don’t personally find everything portrayed in Orange Is The New Black completely implausible.
Granted the big city jail I went to up north was very strict and nothing like the show, but AFAIK that wasn’t a completely corrupt facility like the others I experienced.
I’m not seeing anything particularly interesting about it. “In real life there are guards everywhere. Sometimes this is bad, as when you want some privacy. Sometimes this is good as it can prevent you from getting killed.” Seems like a perfectly reasonable sentiment to me.
If there are guards everywhere,and you’re always being closely supervised, then it wasn’t “fortunate” that there was a guard nearby as she worked in the library.
…if there’s trashcans on every block and I have an empty soda cup in my hand then I am fortunate that there are trashcans on every block.
I see what you’re going for, I just don’t think this use of the word “fortunate” is at all strange, unusual,or noteworthy.
“A romanticized white fantasy that makes cute of an experience that is not cute” Doesn’t that describe every TV cop show that has ever been made? Actually pretty much every TV show produced in America, ever, no?
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