OINTB

“Orange is the New Black,” also known as OINTB, is a Netflix-original series released in June of 2013 based on the non-fictional novel of the same title written by Piper Kerman. The show follows Piper Chapman, a rich, privileged, thirty-something year old white woman who is serving a fifteen-month sentence in a women’s federal minimum-security prison in upstate New York because of her role in a drug trafficking operation many years previously. The cast has significant white, black and Latino populations, spans generations, with inmates ranging from late teens to 60+ and portrays a range of sexual orientations and relationships. The narrative is often interrupted by a series of flashbacks that allows viewers to understand the women’s lives

Per the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), there are currently more than 200,000 women behind bars in this country and the number increases to over one million when probation and parole are factored in. Their stories rarely make headlines or garner sympathy. “Orange is the New Black” is very creative with the storylines of the women prisoners within fictitious Litchfield Penitentiary from Pennsatucky murdering a nurse for commenting on her seven abortions to Miss Claudette trafficking children to clean houses. Although it doesn’t make for an exciting backstory, six in 10 women in federal prison are there for non-violent drug crimes. For every woman that has committed murder there are 99 drug offenders. Almost none of the 99 are international drug smugglers like Piper Chapman or her ex-girlfriend, Alex Vause; most of the women incarcerated for crack cocaine or methamphetamine were caught with less than 100 grams, the weight of an average bar of soap. Many sold small amounts of drugs to support their own addiction or, like the character Taystee, worked as a low-level assistant in a relative or friend’s operation. Despite these minimal roles, female drug offenders, typically, serve an average of seven years and usually end up serving more than the hard-core drug