Orange is the New Black
Orange is the New Black Essay
Piper Kerman is a Smith College graduate who is serving thirteen months in prison, from 2004 to 2005, for a drug trafficking and money laundering crime she committed nearly ten years before. For most of her entire stay Piper is placed in a minimum-security prison in Danbury, Connecticut. I am from Avon, Connecticut so because her story was so close to home it immediately struck me as interesting. Her experience is eye opening, and as the book progresses you can see a slight transformation from a “normal” person to a hardened convict. Pipers book, Orange is the New Black, gives insight into the realities of women’s minimum-security prisons in the United States and how the criminal justice system works today. Which, as we find out, can be a long and frustrating process. While it seems a bit absurd that Piper is being locked away for a crime committed ten years ago, I do think it is justified. What she did was illegal and when you break the laws you go to jail. That being said, I can understand why one would think that this was not justified for two reasons, the first being the fact that she committed her drug trafficking and money laundering crime ten years ago. This may be true, but that doesn’t mean it was wrong, you still need to be punished for your actions. The second reason this would be seen as unfair is because she was young and stupid when she did it. This I do not think is an excuse at all because that does not exclude her from knowing what she was doing and knowing it was wrong. I want to add though, while I agree that the punishment for her crimes were justified, as in the prison sentence, I do not think it was fair that the whole process took that long in general. To make an accurate assessment, though, I think that you have to look at the goals of punishment and see if each goal was met as well. When thinking about the goals of punishment the first that comes to mind is retribution. This is punishment based on
Piper Kerman is a Smith College graduate who is serving thirteen months in prison, from 2004 to 2005, for a drug trafficking and money laundering crime she committed nearly ten years before. For most of her entire stay Piper is placed in a minimum-security prison in Danbury, Connecticut. I am from Avon, Connecticut so because her story was so close to home it immediately struck me as interesting. Her experience is eye opening, and as the book progresses you can see a slight transformation from a “normal” person to a hardened convict. Pipers book, Orange is the New Black, gives insight into the realities of women’s minimum-security prisons in the United States and how the criminal justice system works today. Which, as we find out, can be a long and frustrating process. While it seems a bit absurd that Piper is being locked away for a crime committed ten years ago, I do think it is justified. What she did was illegal and when you break the laws you go to jail. That being said, I can understand why one would think that this was not justified for two reasons, the first being the fact that she committed her drug trafficking and money laundering crime ten years ago. This may be true, but that doesn’t mean it was wrong, you still need to be punished for your actions. The second reason this would be seen as unfair is because she was young and stupid when she did it. This I do not think is an excuse at all because that does not exclude her from knowing what she was doing and knowing it was wrong. I want to add though, while I agree that the punishment for her crimes were justified, as in the prison sentence, I do not think it was fair that the whole process took that long in general. To make an accurate assessment, though, I think that you have to look at the goals of punishment and see if each goal was met as well. When thinking about the goals of punishment the first that comes to mind is retribution. This is punishment based on