Photograph by Sam Zalutsky, courtesy of Spiegel and Grau
Piper Kerman walked out of prison after serving 13 months on felony money laundering and drug trafficking charges. She parlayed her experience into a bestselling book, which led to the smash hit Netflix series of the same name, Orange is the New Black. Most women with a record like that don’t end up on the red carpet—they struggle to reenter society, with jobs and education out of reach because of their pasts, and they return to families that have suffered mightily in their absence. The contrast has driven Kerman, who serves as executive consultant for the fictionalized show, into a life of advocacy around reentry and the conditions of confinement. She’s a sought-after speaker and has testified before Congress about reentry and solitary confinement.
SLM caught up with Kerman by telephone in advance of her upcoming appearances in St. Louis—Tuesday at 7 p.m. at Lindenwood University in St. Charles (209 S. Kingshighway) and Wednesday at 7pm and Thursday at 12:15 p.m. at Maryville University (13550 Conway). Both events are free; for more info, call Left Bank Books at 314-367-6731 or visit their website, left-bank.com.
How do you navigate the contrast between your experience of coming out of prison and that of women who didn’t have your socioeconomic advantages?
It’s one of the things that drives my work, the recognition that I have a lot more privilege and opportunity than the vast majority of the women that I did time with. I think it’s one of the ways that helps folks who have had very little contact with the criminal justice system understand it. When they see that contrast, when I talk about my own experience compared with the more typical experience, sometimes for folks that’s when they have a light bulb moment.
Where are the worst failings in our penal system? What needs the most work?
For me, the number one most important thing is the front end, sentencing reform. There are obviously many questions around policing: how do people end up in the system, are they sent to prison in the first place and if so for how long. For me it’s really about stopping the flow of humanity into our prisons and jails, because there are just so many people in American prisons and jails who don’t necessarily belong there.
Our crime rates are particularly low, and they have been low for a long time, so the growth of the prison population doesn’t actually map to our crime rates. There are other things at work here.
I don’t want to diminish the importance of conditions of confinement, and making sure that prisons and jails are rehabilitative. I think all Americans expect that, and that’s not really what’s happening currently. We need those institutions not to be warehouses, but to be repair shops.
What are some issues that are specific to women and girls?
Nationally, typically women and girls are 6 to 7 percent of the prison population. The problem with that is that those systems work to serve the majority, and the result is that women and girls in the system really get neglected in some important ways. Female prisoners suffer from mental health and mental illness at significantly higher rates than male prisoners. And then you also get into a host of questions around reproductive justice. Every single prison that I was held in, there were pregnant women. In too many states all around the country, pregnant prisoners are frequently shackled, including during labor, which is just appalling. And then there are a host of power dynamic issues in terms of the fact that the vast majority of prison and jails are staffed overwhelmingly by men. It’s hard to imagine a less equal relationship than the relationship between a prison guard and a prisoner. And when gender comes into play as well, things can get really ugly really fast.
What are the biggest issues for people leaving the system?
Without question, the number one thing [I hear] is “I have applied for hundreds and hundreds of jobs, I need to support my family.” One of the most important corollaries to that is this question of kids and incarcerated families. There are millions and millions of children in this country who have a parent in the criminal justice system and what happens to their parents has a really profound impact on those kids. There’s a very unique organization based in Missouri called Ava’s Grace Scholarship Foundation, which does college scholarships for children of incarcerated people. It’s the only one that I know of in the country and it’s amazing.
Is it weird watching a fictionalized version of your life play out on screen?
It’s super weird. I mean it’s very fascinating. I think if you wrote a novel and you watched it be adapted into a show or series or some other medium, it’s got to be interesting. There’s the added layer of mine being a memoir. I think [show creator] Jenji [Kohan] has done a great job. I’m so grateful she wanted to do this. I had tremendous confidence that she would do something provocative and interesting with it, and that was really important to me.
