Speaker 1: Hi, this is Annie, and you're listening to stuff I've
Speaker 1: never told you so. I was listening to MPR the
Speaker 1: other day yep, during the Fall fund drive. And they
Speaker 1: reported on an investigation they had just completed with Northwestern
Speaker 1: University's Meddill School of Journalism around female prisons and in particular,
Speaker 1: discipline and female prisons. They visited five prisons and collected
Speaker 1: data from fifteen states, and their report found female prisoners
Speaker 1: are disciplined at a higher rate than male prisoners, two
Speaker 1: to three times higher, and and for more minor things.
Speaker 1: In California, for instance, female prisoners are twice as likely
Speaker 1: to be written up for or disrespect than men. In Vermont,
Speaker 1: women are three times it's likely to be disciplined for
Speaker 1: making derogatory comments. In Rhode Island and Iowa, women are
Speaker 1: three times more likely to get in trouble for disobedience
Speaker 1: and disruptive behavior. And this matters for a couple of reasons. One,
Speaker 1: women are more likely to end up in solitary confinement
Speaker 1: as a result of these minor infractions as compared to men.
Speaker 1: Inmates could lose good conduct credits, which could lead to
Speaker 1: them spending more time in prison. Female prisoners could lose
Speaker 1: privileges like being able to buy food or hygiene products
Speaker 1: at the commissary, or visitation or phone privileges. Over half
Speaker 1: of the female prison population are mothers to children under eighteen,
Speaker 1: so this means they're completely cut off from their kids.
Speaker 1: At one facility, suicide rates for the female prisoners climbed
Speaker 1: from one to ten a month, and professionals looking into
Speaker 1: it think it has to do with a lot of
Speaker 1: things that this report found that we're talking about. The
Speaker 1: reporters make the point that jails were designed for controlling men,
Speaker 1: and particularly aggressive men, and since the population of female
Speaker 1: prisoners has risen over seven hundred and fifty since night,
Speaker 1: this problem is only worsened. Women are more likely to
Speaker 1: be in prison for less violent crimes as compared to men,
Speaker 1: like drug our property crimes. They're more likely to struggle
Speaker 1: with substance abuse our mental illnesses than male prisoners. On
Speaker 1: top of that, up to female prisoners have been physically
Speaker 1: and or sexually abused. That's going to influence how they
Speaker 1: react and behave in these situations. Female prisoners are often
Speaker 1: more communicative to and the prison system was not set
Speaker 1: up for that, and prison guards were not trained for that.
Speaker 1: This goes back a long way to In eighteen forty five,
Speaker 1: state auditors in Illinois wrote, one female prisoner is of
Speaker 1: more trouble than twenty mailes. Some potential solutions the report
Speaker 1: offered call for training staff specificly to work with female prisoners,
Speaker 1: something called gender responsive training. But it takes a while,
Speaker 1: and it's expensive, and some staff of the largely male
Speaker 1: workforce derogatorily call it hug a thug. Still, it's good
Speaker 1: that we're having these conversations, and today we wanted to
Speaker 1: rerun a classic episode about a show you might have
Speaker 1: heard of on Netflix that helped bring some of these
Speaker 1: issues women face in prison to light. Orange Is the
Speaker 1: New Black. I will say that every time I've watched
Speaker 1: Orange Is a New Black, when I wanted to bene it,
Speaker 1: I've been in the middle of some weird life situation
Speaker 1: where I I don't know, I'm like at a studio
Speaker 1: alone at night, trying to complete a project, and just
Speaker 1: watching Range a New Black on a very small screen,
Speaker 1: so as a special weird place in my heart. But
Speaker 1: this episode is a is a good look about the
Speaker 1: US prison system, what it gets right and when it
Speaker 1: gets wrong, when it pertains to women. How accurate is
Speaker 1: the show? So we hope you enjoy. Welcome to stuff
Speaker 1: Mom never told you from how Stuff works not color. Hello,
Speaker 1: and welcome to the podcast. I'm Caroline and I'm Kristen,
Speaker 1: and you guys might have taken note of the fact
Speaker 1: that Kristen and I have been, you know, encouraging you
Speaker 1: to go watch Orange Is the New Black on Netflix.
Speaker 1: It is a really incredible, compelling show full of really
Speaker 1: really colorful characters who have pretty incredible and again compelling backstories.
Speaker 1: And when we put out the call to get episodes suggestions,
Speaker 1: one of the top requested episodes was to take a
Speaker 1: real look at real women in prison. Yeah, so here
Speaker 1: you go, contest winner, Orange is the New Black versus
Speaker 1: real life women's risens. And we're gonna have to give
Speaker 1: just summaries of all of these different facets because there
Speaker 1: are so many different angles to what life is really
Speaker 1: like in women's prisons and who are those women, those
Speaker 1: very real women who are incarcerated. Um, but we're going
Speaker 1: to do the best we can to give you a
Speaker 1: comprehensive snapshot of what life is like in there, and
Speaker 1: just for a snapshot as well of Orange as the
Speaker 1: New Black. It was created by Genji Cohen, who also
Speaker 1: created the show Weeds, which I'm sure is a favorite
Speaker 1: among some listeners as well. And it's based on a
Speaker 1: memoir by the same name by a woman named Piper Kerman,
Speaker 1: who is Piper Chapman in the show. She's the main character. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and now Piper Kerman serves as a communications consultant for
Speaker 1: a firm in New York, and she also volunteers for
Speaker 1: the Women's Prison Association and has since poined their board. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's pretty cool how she has parlayed her experience the
Speaker 1: year that she spent in prison, not just to write
Speaker 1: a best selling memoir and make some cash off of
Speaker 1: turning it into a show, but to really use her platform,
Speaker 1: her privilege platform, in a lot of ways to highlight
Speaker 1: the just horrific conditions that women are living in in
Speaker 1: prison and also the injustice, the rampant injustice that is
Speaker 1: our criminal justice system that is keeping not only women
Speaker 1: in prison, but also getting them, keeping them in this
Speaker 1: cycle of incarceration. So let's first talk about the show.
Speaker 1: Let's talk about some things. Oh, and I guess we
Speaker 1: should say spoiler alerts ahead. If you have not seen
Speaker 1: Orange as the New Black. You might want to watch
Speaker 1: it before you listen to this podcast because we're gonna
Speaker 1: share some things, not too many crazy spoilers, but but
Speaker 1: still we're gonna fill you in on the show. Yeah. Um, well,
Speaker 1: so let's start by talking about what kind of things
Speaker 1: the show got right, because I know, you know, as
Speaker 1: I'm watching it, I'm like, God, some of these things
Speaker 1: seem terrible. Some of them seem not so bad. For instance,
Speaker 1: a lot of the women have great camaraderie. Like, how
Speaker 1: accurate is this stuff? And so this is coming from
Speaker 1: um a piece that Jeff Smith wrote. He's a former
Speaker 1: Missouri state senator who resigned his seat after pleading guilty
Speaker 1: to two counts of obstruction of justice, and he spent
Speaker 1: a year in federal prison. And we're also getting some
Speaker 1: of this information from a story that appeared on the
Speaker 1: cut from New York Magazine. They sat down with five
Speaker 1: formally incarcerated women and talked about Orange is the New
Speaker 1: Black and how accurate these portrayals of women and prisoners are. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and so some of the general things that it gets
Speaker 1: right is that small thing ings have huge consequences. For instance,
Speaker 1: Smith talks about how one of his main strategies to
Speaker 1: stay safe, as he writes, because he weighs only a
Speaker 1: hundred and seventeen pounds, he's a pretty small guy, was
Speaker 1: to quietly give stolen tomatoes and onions to certain powerful inmates,
Speaker 1: which effectively helped me build critical alliances. Because what what
Speaker 1: might seem like minor infractions or social awkwardness kinds of
Speaker 1: things really do have outsized consequences. For instance, in the show,
Speaker 1: when you have read essentially starving Piper, he he wasn't
Speaker 1: at all surprised by that. He was like, something like
Speaker 1: that could absolutely happen. And as a side note with
Speaker 1: the whole starvation thing, courts have upheld prisons serving neutral
Speaker 1: OAF as punishment and neutral OAF for people who are
Speaker 1: not acquainted with it. It's the stuff that Piper was
Speaker 1: served when she went into the special housing unit. The shoe,
Speaker 1: which is essentially solitary confinement and neutral loaf is what
Speaker 1: it sounds like. It's a loaf of stuff that doesn't
Speaker 1: taste very good but contains all of the nutrients necessary
Speaker 1: to keep you alive. So it's not quite starving someone
Speaker 1: to death. Not yeah, not quite. Um. Another thing that
Speaker 1: is accurate is just the fact of having to to
Speaker 1: kind of make do with what you have, creating something
Speaker 1: out of very little. For instance, the cool a lip
Speaker 1: gloss in the show, I think they made signs at
Speaker 1: one point and they didn't have paint, so I think
Speaker 1: they used kool aid for that too. But also using
Speaker 1: in the show, they've used Maxi pads as shoes or
Speaker 1: as masks for when everybody got sick. Yeah. And then
Speaker 1: one big question that a lot of people had was
Speaker 1: what about the sexual tension, because the way that I
Speaker 1: ascribed Orange is the New Black in my notes is
Speaker 1: that it kind of makes it look like women's prison
Speaker 1: is a hyper sexual lesbian summer camp with really means
Speaker 1: psychopathic counselors um. And the ex prisoners said, yeah, you know,
Speaker 1: of course people have urges. But the women also pointed
Speaker 1: out that the rampant sexy times that you see on
Speaker 1: Orange Is the New Black are overblown a bit. It's
Speaker 1: not as common for women to be constantly having sex
Speaker 1: with other women in prison or jail, right, And they
Speaker 1: did get it right. Also that the prison administrators really
Speaker 1: do not care about the women as people, and that
Speaker 1: discipline can be pretty arbitrary. Also that visitation can be
Speaker 1: depressing when when relatives come to visit you in prison. Yeah.
Speaker 1: On the one hand, you have Pipers family and friends
Speaker 1: coming and it's and it's usually pretty awful because they
Speaker 1: don't want to It's like they're in denial that she's
Speaker 1: actually in prison, or they're being too gawky about it.
Speaker 1: It's like one or the other. And then you have
Speaker 1: instances in the show like when um, Diana's mom is
Speaker 1: sitting there and she's so angry and just trying to
Speaker 1: get information from her boyfriend as to whether or not
Speaker 1: he's been sleeping around and just all of the you know,
Speaker 1: those those two worlds colliding. Um, so understandably visitation, when
Speaker 1: the outside meets the inside, it can certainly breed some discontent. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and then um, the whole issue. There was one episode
Speaker 1: of Orange is the New Black where um, one woman
Speaker 1: Big Boo, is upset that her kind of ex girlfriend
Speaker 1: is is leaving. And so there's this whole issue of
Speaker 1: antagonizing people before they are set to be released in
Speaker 1: order to try to get them stuck in jail for longer. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And in that case, that's someone wanting to keep someone
Speaker 1: that they love from leaving. But a lot of times.
Speaker 1: That's what happens with enemies. You've got to watch out
Speaker 1: if you're about to leave, and if you've made an enemy, uh,
Speaker 1: there's a good chance that someone might try to sabotage
Speaker 1: your release. And speaking of release, and this is something
Speaker 1: we'll talk about in more detail, recidivism happens a lot
Speaker 1: when spoiler, this is a big spoiler when we see
Speaker 1: Tasty come back after she's released and she talks about
Speaker 1: how it was basically impossible for her to stay out
Speaker 1: of prison. She couldn't do it because she had absolutely
Speaker 1: no resources. And that is very true to life, because
Speaker 1: ex prisoners are given little to no resources to get
Speaker 1: back on their feet, especially if they're felons. Well, so,
Speaker 1: what does the show get wrong? What do they gloss
Speaker 1: over or not portray accurately. One of those things is
Speaker 1: the consequences for or talking too much, snitching and crossing
Speaker 1: racial lines are actually much harsher than portrayed in the show. Yeah,
Speaker 1: for instance, when everybody listens to Piper's boyfriend on the
Speaker 1: This American Life type show talking about what she tells
Speaker 1: him about her experience in prison and all of the
Speaker 1: different people who she's essentially snitching on and everyone's hearing this.
Speaker 1: The retribution for that probably would have been much harsher
Speaker 1: in a real women's prison. And even though with race,
Speaker 1: even though it's very segregated in the show, there's still
Speaker 1: a lot more mixing and crossing of those racial lines
Speaker 1: than there probably would be. Yeah, and the whole nudity issue,
Speaker 1: I mean, you know, the show opens with shower scenes. Um,
Speaker 1: the in actuality, there's a lot less nudity in the
Speaker 1: showers because you have to just kind of watch your
Speaker 1: back you might get assaulted. Yeah, and that's more true
Speaker 1: probably in male prisons. That was something that Jeff Smith
Speaker 1: pointed out in terms of listen, you're really gonna want
Speaker 1: to be naked for as short of a time as possible. Um. So, essentially,
Speaker 1: what the show gets wrong is that the worse is
Speaker 1: so much worse. The bad stuff is so bad, and so,
Speaker 1: you know, I think that if they were to portray
Speaker 1: it as it actually is, the show would almost be unwatchable.
Speaker 1: But on the bright side, one thing that I found
Speaker 1: that is true in prison becoming more true in prison
Speaker 1: is that yoga is practiced in a growing number of prisons. Yeah,
Speaker 1: because it is a great way to be active and
Speaker 1: also to relax, and it's cheap. A lot of times
Speaker 1: the people who come into the prisons to teach the
Speaker 1: yoga classes are volunteers. Yeah, The New York Times did
Speaker 1: a whole piece on this and talked about how even
Speaker 1: in men's prisons, some of the the guys were really
Speaker 1: hesitant to go and do something they might have seen
Speaker 1: as not being really tough, but that anecdotally a lot
Speaker 1: of them report really positive benefits from a regular yoga practice.
Speaker 1: So there are yoga jaans in prison. But then on
Speaker 1: a download again, because really from here on it kind
Speaker 1: of all the information that we're going to offer does
Speaker 1: get a bit dismal. Um, we should talk about trans
Speaker 1: people in prison, because we have Sophia Bursett, who has
Speaker 1: played so wonderfully by Laverne Cox, who portrays male to
Speaker 1: female transgender person who had undergone gender reassignment surgery and
Speaker 1: later is denied hormone treatment and is having to deal
Speaker 1: with the physical and emotional repercussions from that. And the
Speaker 1: situation for trans people who are incarcerated is really dismal, right,
Speaker 1: And I think it's reflected pretty well in that issue
Speaker 1: that you just mentioned of having her hormone therapy denied.
Speaker 1: In reality, seventeen of trans people in prison are denied
Speaker 1: hormone treatment and often end up in prison according to
Speaker 1: their birth sex, which can lead to a huge amount
Speaker 1: of severe harassment. Yeah, especially from male to female pre
Speaker 1: gender reassignment surgery prisoners who might be put in a
Speaker 1: men's prison, that risk of harassment definitely goes up. Um
Speaker 1: and just the risk for going to jail, for being arrested,
Speaker 1: going to jail, being imprisoned is higher for trans people
Speaker 1: compared to the rest of the population. A report from
Speaker 1: the National Center for Transgender Equality found that sixteen percent
Speaker 1: of trans people surveyed had spent at least some jail
Speaker 1: time or prison time because of things lie unemployment, because
Speaker 1: the unemployment rate is twice that of the general population,
Speaker 1: which is often related to harassment, which is related to
Speaker 1: being transgender, and so because of that high rate of unemployment,
Speaker 1: they might turn to things like sex work, drug trades,
Speaker 1: and also be homeless. Right and sixteen Also, another sixteen
Speaker 1: six of the respondents who had been in prison or
Speaker 1: jail reported being physically assaulted. Fifteen percent of responds who
Speaker 1: had been in jail reported they had been sexually assaulted.
Speaker 1: So in a way, the orange is the new black
Speaker 1: character Sophia has. I mean, aside from the hormone treatment issue,
Speaker 1: that portrays the situation for a trans prisoner and almost
Speaker 1: the best possible scenario, right. I mean, she is still like,
Speaker 1: you know, verbally attacked, and she still deals with a
Speaker 1: whole lot of people, you know, just saying terrible things
Speaker 1: to her. But she is not in a men's prison,
Speaker 1: right And the and side note, her hair salon probably
Speaker 1: wouldn't exist in a real woman's love her hair and
Speaker 1: the show, Like I swear, I just watched an episode
Speaker 1: last night and she's wearing this like headband and her
Speaker 1: hair is all braided, and I just I was like, God,
Speaker 1: I wish I could do that to my hair, but
Speaker 1: it's not thick enough anyway, total tangent. But another nightmare
Speaker 1: situation that we've already mentioned is the special housing unit
Speaker 1: the Shoe, the solitary confinement where Piper goes. When she
Speaker 1: was dancing a little provocatively and Sam Healy got a
Speaker 1: little upset with her. This is where inmates are separated
Speaker 1: from the rest of the population and they have very
Speaker 1: limited activity. Yeah, and about five point seven percent of
Speaker 1: federal prisoners. Around ten thousand people are in the shoe
Speaker 1: at any given moment, and with the solitary conditions, some
Speaker 1: people have argued that the shoe constitutes a specific form
Speaker 1: of torture. Yeah, I mean, I I can't imagine. I mean,
Speaker 1: and in the show, Piper is only in there for
Speaker 1: about forty eight hours, but I mean, she was already
Speaker 1: you know, her character is already losing it. I can't,
Speaker 1: I can't imagine. Well, and then that relates back to
Speaker 1: the whole issue of arbitrary discipline, where you don't know
Speaker 1: exactly what you have to do to stay out of
Speaker 1: the shoe. If you simply cross someone in a way
Speaker 1: that they don't like, then you might be thrown in there.
Speaker 1: And I mean, and who's to say how long? You know,
Speaker 1: how long that you'll be in there? Right? Um, So
Speaker 1: let's take a deeper look away from Orange is a
Speaker 1: New Black, the show and into women's prisons. And I
Speaker 1: cannot recommend the article that we found over at Bitch
Speaker 1: Magazine that did just this. It didn't end depth look
Speaker 1: at how Orange is a New Black compares to real life.
Speaker 1: And uh, this is a major source for a lot
Speaker 1: of these statistics that we're gonna be tossing out so
Speaker 1: for an idea of just how bad the situation is
Speaker 1: in terms of imprisonment in the United States, the US
Speaker 1: is home to five percent of the world's population and
Speaker 1: twenty five percent of the world's prison inmates, and women
Speaker 1: are this country's fastest growing prison population. And according to
Speaker 1: the Sentencing Project, the number of women incarcerated in the
Speaker 1: US increased by six hundred and forty six percent between
Speaker 1: nineteen eight that's from fifteen thousand, one eighteen to one
Speaker 1: hundred and twelve thousand seven. Yeah, and just to get
Speaker 1: even more specific, Oklahoma incarceraates more women per capita than
Speaker 1: any other state um. And if we break it down racially,
Speaker 1: as of Black women have been incarcerated at nearly three
Speaker 1: times the rate of white women, and Hispanic women were
Speaker 1: incarcerated at one point six times the rate of white women.
Speaker 1: And even though those are huge disparities, it's actually narrowed
Speaker 1: as black women were incarcerated at six times the rate
Speaker 1: as white women in two thousand UM And and just
Speaker 1: for comparison, though black men are imprisoned at about twenty
Speaker 1: two times the rate that black women are white men,
Speaker 1: are incarcerated at ten times the rate of white women
Speaker 1: and Latino men at sixteen times the rate. So even
Speaker 1: though the imprisonment of women has skyrocketed in the last
Speaker 1: twenty years, that's only a small portion of the overall
Speaker 1: prison population, which is overwhelmingly male and overwhelmingly black and Latino.
Speaker 1: And as we'll get into a little bit deeper in
Speaker 1: just a second, I mean, one of the consequences of,
Speaker 1: you know, having so many people in prison at any
Speaker 1: given time is just the economic hardships that people face,
Speaker 1: because once you've been to prison, it's so hard to
Speaker 1: claw your way back up. And uh, Dorothy Roberts, who's
Speaker 1: a professor at the University of Pennsylvania, rights in the
Speaker 1: u c l A Law review that mass imprisonment of
Speaker 1: blacks and Latinos allows the state to exert direct control
Speaker 1: over poorly educated, unskilled, and jobless people who have no
Speaker 1: place in the market economy because of racism. It also
Speaker 1: preserves a racial cast system that civil rights reforms were
Speaker 1: supposed to abolish. And one of the big issues specifically
Speaker 1: related to the female prison population and something that Piper Kerman,
Speaker 1: who is the real life Piper Chapman talks about a
Speaker 1: lot is how a third of prisoners are in for
Speaker 1: non violent drug offenses. In other words, these women aren't
Speaker 1: going out killing, assaulting, robbing. A lot of times it is,
Speaker 1: as it's portrayed in the show of women being caught
Speaker 1: in the wrong place making poor decision ends, mind you,
Speaker 1: but being in the wrong place at the wrong time
Speaker 1: as part of drug deals that might be going on,
Speaker 1: and the punishment for it in a lot of ways
Speaker 1: is so much greater than the crime because once you
Speaker 1: are in prison, even if you get out, it's so
Speaker 1: hard to stay out. But before we talk about life
Speaker 1: on the outside, we've got to talk about two big
Speaker 1: issues facing women on the inside that Orange is the
Speaker 1: New Black doesn't focus in on too much, the first
Speaker 1: of which is sexual assault. Right sexual abuse by guards
Speaker 1: is much more likely to happen in women's prisons, and
Speaker 1: one prison that is focused on a lot is the
Speaker 1: Denver Women's Correctional Facility, which has the highest sexual assault
Speaker 1: rate in the nation, with ten point seven percent of
Speaker 1: inmates claiming sexual misconduct. And it's should be noted that
Speaker 1: the national average is two point four sent and that's
Speaker 1: at least of women who are even reporting this because
Speaker 1: there are plenty of offenders who are scared to report
Speaker 1: sexual assault or rape for fear of retribution. And to
Speaker 1: give you an idea of how sexual abuse by guards
Speaker 1: compares to the women's prison population versus men's prisons, more
Speaker 1: than three fourths of all reported staff sexual misconduct involves
Speaker 1: women victimized by male correctional officers. And we see a
Speaker 1: little bit of that portrayal in Orange is the New Black,
Speaker 1: but it it pales in comparison to what these statistics indicate.
Speaker 1: And even before these women end up in prison, a
Speaker 1: lot of times they have already survived some kind of
Speaker 1: sexual abuse. Forty percent of women in prison are survivors
Speaker 1: of physical and sexual abuse, right, And when you think
Speaker 1: about what that does to people, I mean a lot
Speaker 1: of times that does put you on a path where
Speaker 1: you are more susceptible to you know, a lifestyle that
Speaker 1: involves drugs or or puts you in you know, bad
Speaker 1: life situations. And so you know, if you end up
Speaker 1: in prison and abuse is what you've known, and you
Speaker 1: just continue to be physically or sexually abused, it can
Speaker 1: be hard to get past that. Yeah, And and and
Speaker 1: thinking about the attendant mental health issues that are coming
Speaker 1: into prison along with these women who have already encountered
Speaker 1: so much hardship. Women in state prison in two thousand
Speaker 1: four had a mental health problem. But are those kinds
Speaker 1: of things being addressed while they're in jail while they're
Speaker 1: in prison? Probably not, because the system is completely overworked
Speaker 1: and totally flawed, and there are not dedicated resources to
Speaker 1: actually making sure that these women are in good and
Speaker 1: healthy shape inside and out to be prepared to live
Speaker 1: a life away from crime, right And they honestly can't
Speaker 1: even get away from the prison culture when they are
Speaker 1: giving birth. One and thirty three women in federal prisons
Speaker 1: are pregnant, and shackling these women when they give birth
Speaker 1: is still legal in thirty two states. And I mean
Speaker 1: this is a practice that the American Medical Association calls
Speaker 1: medically hazardous and barbaric. Yeah, I was astounded to learn
Speaker 1: that Illinois became the first state to pass a law
Speaker 1: banning shackling during childbirth in nine nine. Only then did
Speaker 1: we start saying, huh, there seems to be something a
Speaker 1: little bit wrong with a woman who is giving birth
Speaker 1: being handcuffed, her hands handcuffed to the bed frame, and
Speaker 1: her feet being handcuffed to the bedframe, and as soon
Speaker 1: as that baby is delivered, it is probably taken away
Speaker 1: from her. There's one prisoner who recounted in an ABC
Speaker 1: News story about this how she gave birth with her hand,
Speaker 1: hands and feet handcuffed and wasn't able to even contact
Speaker 1: her baby until seventy days later. And she didn't her
Speaker 1: husband was not allowed in the hospital room. It was
Speaker 1: just a guard there with her. And even though Illinois,
Speaker 1: for instance, has outlawed shackling, it doesn't mean that it's stopped.
Speaker 1: Because there was recently a four point one million dollars
Speaker 1: settlement for eighty Chicago inmates who were shackled between two
Speaker 1: thousand seven and two thousand ten. It's still happening now.
Speaker 1: A two thousand seven anti shackling policy was enacted in
Speaker 1: the Federal Bureau of Prisons, but not it should be
Speaker 1: noted on a statewide level. And even if you aren't
Speaker 1: pregnant in prison, an overwhelming majority of the female prison
Speaker 1: population are also mothers. Around two thirds of women are
Speaker 1: A hundred and twenty thousand women in prison have children.
Speaker 1: And and what effects does this have on the children?
Speaker 1: Not a one? Not surprisingly no, And you know the
Speaker 1: foster care system exploded in a parallel fashion to the
Speaker 1: explosion of the prison population. So the fact that, I
Speaker 1: mean it's not just women, you know, it's not just mothers,
Speaker 1: it's any Any child whose parent or parents have been
Speaker 1: in prison are more likely to suffer negative effects. But yeah,
Speaker 1: the the foster more more kids are going into foster
Speaker 1: care as more parents are going in to prison. And
Speaker 1: so according to Pew Charitable Trust report, one in every
Speaker 1: twenty eight children in the United States has a parent
Speaker 1: in jail or prison. But when you crystallize that down
Speaker 1: along racial lines, for African American children, that number is
Speaker 1: one in nine and for Hispanic children that's one in
Speaker 1: twenty eight, whereas one in fifty seven White children have
Speaker 1: a parent in jail or prism. And we should also
Speaker 1: note that on a population wide basis, there are more
Speaker 1: women in prison with kids than men in prison with kids,
Speaker 1: and a lot of times, because women end up being
Speaker 1: the primary caregiver, having that mom in prison does have
Speaker 1: such a debilitating effect a lot of times for these kids.
Speaker 1: Not to say that if you know a mom is
Speaker 1: involved in drug abuse or is living in an unsafe environment,
Speaker 1: that that that's a good thing. For the kid. But
Speaker 1: it's but it's like it's such it's yet another argument
Speaker 1: for rehabilitating rather than just incarcerating. Right. Well, along these
Speaker 1: same lines, one horrifying thing that came to light several
Speaker 1: months ago was the issue of sterilization of women who
Speaker 1: give birth while they're in prison. Um this is coming
Speaker 1: from the Center for Investigative Reporting. California prisons have sterilized
Speaker 1: nearly two fifty women over the past few decades, and
Speaker 1: nearly a hundred and fifty of those were between two
Speaker 1: thousand and six and twenty in and they talked to O. B. G.
Speaker 1: Y N. James Heinrich, who's in this California prison, and
Speaker 1: his defense is kind of chilling. He says that spending
Speaker 1: money to sterilize these women is better than spending money
Speaker 1: on welfare for these unwanted children as they procreate more. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and and you know, and so the the issue behind this,
Speaker 1: the controversy, it's it's not like these women are saying, hey,
Speaker 1: would you mind a lot of times this is its coercion,
Speaker 1: it's forced, it's you know. This one woman's account was that,
Speaker 1: you know, as she was getting closer and closer to
Speaker 1: her due date, this Heinrich. This Dr Heinrich was like,
Speaker 1: you know, you should really think about it. Are you
Speaker 1: gonna do it? You're gonna do it. We're gonna do it, right,
Speaker 1: And so, you know, the day came and he you know,
Speaker 1: just went ahead and did it. That's horrifying because it's
Speaker 1: so indicative of how a lot of times people men, women,
Speaker 1: kids alike who end up in the criminal justice system
Speaker 1: for whatever reason, ceased to be a person, and they
Speaker 1: just become a statistic, they become a problem, you know.
Speaker 1: And yeah, it is expensive to pay for people to
Speaker 1: be in jail. It's about sixty dollars a year to
Speaker 1: pay for of tax payer money to pay for one
Speaker 1: woman who's in prison. And that's insane. But that's not
Speaker 1: the problem of you know, it's it's a it's a
Speaker 1: system wide problem. I feel like that's a top down issue. Sterilization.
Speaker 1: Treating those women like animals in a lot of ways
Speaker 1: is certainly not going to stop that cycle, right, And
Speaker 1: it's it's just it was so horrifying, partially because you know,
Speaker 1: this country does have a history of doing that, but
Speaker 1: doing it particularly to people of color, and so to
Speaker 1: hear the story that California prisons have so recently still
Speaker 1: been forcing women or coercing women into it. It's that
Speaker 1: is eye opening, and that doesn't change the fact that
Speaker 1: there are still what two thirds of women in prison
Speaker 1: who go into prison already with kids, and those kids
Speaker 1: are at heightened risk first getting in trouble at school, depression,
Speaker 1: and then ending up in jail. So it really is cyclical,
Speaker 1: which leads us to the problem with recidivism of leaving
Speaker 1: and getting right back, because roughly four and ten adult
Speaker 1: American offenders will return to prison within three years of
Speaker 1: their release, according to a two thousand eleven report from
Speaker 1: the Pew Charitable Trusts. Right, and so this is going
Speaker 1: back to the tasty character on Orange is the New
Speaker 1: Black when she does talk about how much she had
Speaker 1: to deal with and what landed her back in prison,
Speaker 1: because prisoners simply don't just walk out. Um, you have
Speaker 1: all sorts of parole and probation fees, jail book in fees,
Speaker 1: jail per dams for pre trialed attention, presentenced report fees,
Speaker 1: just so much, so many little rules and regulations and
Speaker 1: so much bign that you have to deal with once
Speaker 1: you get released from jail. And if for instance, you
Speaker 1: have a felony drug conviction, you're ineligible for housing assistance.
Speaker 1: And I think that the housing issue is one thing
Speaker 1: that landed Tasty back in jail. And the show she
Speaker 1: had nowhere to go, she had nowhere to sleep. What
Speaker 1: are you going to do? Um? And only about ten
Speaker 1: percent of inmates attend educational, vocational or treatment programs on
Speaker 1: a given day, not necessarily because they don't want to,
Speaker 1: but because those rehabilitational programs are often not offered, probably
Speaker 1: because there's not money for it, there aren't resources, and
Speaker 1: the way that we often dehumanize the people who need
Speaker 1: those kinds of resources. And it's unfortunate because research from
Speaker 1: Pew and other sources have shown the benefits monetary and
Speaker 1: otherwise that are reaped when you install occasional vocational, et
Speaker 1: cetera kinds of training programs for prisoners. Right because Kerman
Speaker 1: real life Piper talked about how you know, she did
Speaker 1: attend some of those classes even though she herself had
Speaker 1: a man and a job waiting for her when she
Speaker 1: got out of prison. You know, she she talked about
Speaker 1: going to some of those quote unquote classes and how
Speaker 1: she went to a housing class. You know, where people
Speaker 1: have questions about like how do I get an apartment,
Speaker 1: how do I pay rent? Like how do I do
Speaker 1: this and that? But they were teaching them about home
Speaker 1: repair and applying siting to the side of your house,
Speaker 1: or you know, just really random things like that where
Speaker 1: it's like, well, this isn't helping anyone, it's not real life,
Speaker 1: you know, reality based teaching. Yeah, and in prison vocation programs,
Speaker 1: for instance, like preparing people to get jobs, which is
Speaker 1: really really hard if you are a felon, especially, those
Speaker 1: kinds of programs produce net benefits of over thirteen dollars
Speaker 1: per offender or over twelve of dollars for every dollar invested,
Speaker 1: and will net a drop in recidivism. So that's just
Speaker 1: one example of how the system could not only help
Speaker 1: these people, but also help stop the cycle that has
Speaker 1: led to this overwhelming like metasticizing prison population where prisons
Speaker 1: are in jails are now being outsourced to private companies,
Speaker 1: for profit companies. We don't have room for our prison
Speaker 1: population in the United States. Isn't that crazy to think
Speaker 1: about that we arrest so many people and have no
Speaker 1: place to put them. Well, I mean, you know, I'm
Speaker 1: saying this from a privileged position obviously, but it doesn't
Speaker 1: it seem like it's common sense. Two and I realized
Speaker 1: this is moving a mountain. It doesn't seem like it's
Speaker 1: common sense to put more effort and money into community
Speaker 1: programs thanks to actually help people, whether you're someone who
Speaker 1: has been in jail or or not, but to help
Speaker 1: strengthen communities and educate people so that they don't cycle back. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, it's it's it's such a comprehensive problem that
Speaker 1: you could talk about from the way that prisons are
Speaker 1: set up all the way to how our laws are established.
Speaker 1: And I mean there have been, um, there has been
Speaker 1: recent news about eliminating UH mandatory minimum sentences for drug offenses,
Speaker 1: which would cut down a lot on all of these
Speaker 1: massive numbers of drug offenders who are currently behind bars. Um.
Speaker 1: And then you take it back even further to education,
Speaker 1: keeping kids in school, keeping families intact, etcetera. You know, Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's the problem of our exploding prisons is bigger than
Speaker 1: those prisons for sure, exactly. Um. And to me, the
Speaker 1: if there is good news, UM, it's that there are
Speaker 1: people like Piper Kerman who are really trying to shine
Speaker 1: a light on these issues. I think it's a good
Speaker 1: thing that, even though it might not be the most
Speaker 1: realistic portrayal of women's prison, I think that it's great
Speaker 1: that Gingi Cohen made Orange is the New Black, and
Speaker 1: I'm glad that it has hit such a cultural nerve
Speaker 1: and that people are asking these questions of, oh, well,
Speaker 1: what's what's it like in real life? And I think
Speaker 1: the reason why we're so curious to know how it
Speaker 1: applies to real life because it highlights these women as
Speaker 1: real people and not just oh oh, they're just prisoners,
Speaker 1: are just offenders, they're just criminals. Keep them away from me. Well.
Speaker 1: There's a point in one of the episodes where Red
Speaker 1: is talking to Natasha Leon's character, um, and you know,
Speaker 1: Natasha Leone is saying something and Red is like, well,
Speaker 1: you know, what are the what are the town expeirs care?
Speaker 1: They don't care. You know, we're eating this junk because
Speaker 1: they're just trying to watch what the bottom line is.
Speaker 1: You know, we're the bad guys. And I think I
Speaker 1: think there is that attitude of like, well, I don't
Speaker 1: care about what anything is like in prison for prisoners
Speaker 1: because they're prisoners. They're bad guys and it's like, well,
Speaker 1: but you have to look at the cultural effect, the
Speaker 1: societal effect that all of this is having exactly. Um.
Speaker 1: And can I close off with a really long quote
Speaker 1: from Piper Kerman please please do who after after learning
Speaker 1: more about her and what she does and how she
Speaker 1: uses her now very elevated platform to advocate for those
Speaker 1: women that she was imprisoned with and who are in
Speaker 1: prison right now, I have so much respect for her. Um.
Speaker 1: And she was talking to the Washington Post about the
Speaker 1: current state of the women's prison population, and she says,
Speaker 1: I think that women in prison are really emblematic of typical,
Speaker 1: low level, non violent offenders. That is a giant growth
Speaker 1: air in terms of our prison system over the last
Speaker 1: thirty years. We're putting people in prison who we never
Speaker 1: would have put in prison before. And there's a staggering
Speaker 1: social cost when we talk about the families, but also
Speaker 1: it costs about sixty dollars a year and that adds
Speaker 1: up really quickly. And we're talking about someone who was
Speaker 1: not this prominent threat to safety. It's just a policy
Speaker 1: and that's it. And families and communities are being destroyed
Speaker 1: because of it. Yeah, So what can people do if
Speaker 1: they want to help out if they are my if
Speaker 1: they are as concerned about what life is really like
Speaker 1: in women's prisons and in jails and prisons in general,
Speaker 1: what what can people do to help out? Well, there
Speaker 1: is the Women's Prison Association, which is what Piper Kerman
Speaker 1: is affiliated with. That's at w p A online dot org.
Speaker 1: And then there is this Sentencing Project which we referenced earlier,
Speaker 1: and that is at Sentencing Project dot org. So now
Speaker 1: I want to hear from you. Mom Stuff at Discovery
Speaker 1: dot com is where you can send your emails thoughts
Speaker 1: on Orange as a new Black women's prison, the criminal
Speaker 1: justice system. I know we threw a lot of information
Speaker 1: at you for this one, but it's a really big
Speaker 1: one to tackle, So we want to hear all of
Speaker 1: your thoughts mom stuff at Discovery dot com. You can
Speaker 1: also hit us up on Facebook or tweet us at
Speaker 1: mom Stuff podcast. And we've got a couple of letters
Speaker 1: to share right after. And now back to our letters. Well,
Speaker 1: since we're about to wrap up our special series on
Speaker 1: lean in women work in the Will to Lead by
Speaker 1: Cheryl Sandberg, who want to share a couple of letters
Speaker 1: from our episode on the workplace fear factor This is
Speaker 1: a letter from Cynthia. She says, I'm a chemistry professor
Speaker 1: at a large public university. I've always felt like it
Speaker 1: was a complete act accident that I was accepted to
Speaker 1: a top graduate program. I would get so worried about
Speaker 1: it that I wouldn't participate in the extremely important study
Speaker 1: groups my first year, instead choosing to cry over my
Speaker 1: intelligible books alone. Later, I found that many of my classmates,
Speaker 1: male and female, felt the same. However, we women would
Speaker 1: over prepare and obsessed to the point that it was
Speaker 1: detrimental to our health. My graduate adviser, another woman who
Speaker 1: admits to strong impostor syndrome, taught me to fake it
Speaker 1: until I make it. Well, I've now made it, and
Speaker 1: every day I feel more and more like I deserve it.
Speaker 1: I've worked my butt off, darn it, and I'm a
Speaker 1: great chemist because of it. She says, keep up your
Speaker 1: good work. I love your podcast, so thank you, Cynthia,
Speaker 1: and keep up your chemistry. She's very cool. Well, I've
Speaker 1: got one here from Becca, subject line impostor in the Laboratory.
Speaker 1: She writes, I'm a recent college graduate who was fortunate
Speaker 1: enough to land a fantastic job in a research lab
Speaker 1: straight out of school. I don't admit this to anyone,
Speaker 1: but I really only got the job through personal connections.
Speaker 1: It's true that this isn't really unusual, but knowing that
Speaker 1: I didn't earn the job through merit alone has made
Speaker 1: me feel like a total impostor. I am surrounded by
Speaker 1: intelligent individuals, and I often doubt my ability to work
Speaker 1: alongside them. I'm three months into this job, and I
Speaker 1: have to say that this impostor syndrome has been strangely
Speaker 1: motivational for me. My first month here was shaky, and
Speaker 1: I felt really undeserving of this position. However, I harnessed
Speaker 1: that uneasiness and I have been working really hard to
Speaker 1: prove that I belong here. Apparently my hard work is
Speaker 1: paying off. Last week, my supervisor told me she was
Speaker 1: impressed with my work. Thanks for the great podcast. You
Speaker 1: two have helped me through hours of culturing cells, extracting DNA,
Speaker 1: and countless other tests that sound more exciting than they
Speaker 1: really are. So keep on rocking at Becca and everybody
Speaker 1: else who's listening. Mom Stuff at Discovery dot com is
Speaker 1: where you can send your letters. You can tweet us
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