Piper Kerman, whose 2010 memoir inspired the critically acclaimed Netflix series by the same name, visited Elon University to make the case for reforming the criminal justice system.
As Piper Kerman witnessed firsthand, American prisons are filled with many people who have been marginalized by society long before they were ever assigned an inmate number. Convicts often experience substance abuse, poverty, mental illness or racism in the communities from which they’re removed.
So anyone who wants to reduce crime, improve communities and strengthen families should start by examining the way they treat Americans who live with such challenges, the bestselling author said Wednesday during a visit to Elon University.
“There are a lot of different ways we push people to the edges of our society,” Kerman said. “I would suggest strongly that if we can think about ways to pull people into the heart of a community, we’re going to be a lot less reliant on prison and jail cells than we have been for the last 30 or 40 years.”
A packed McCrary Theatre greeted Kerman for the Sept. 30 lecture “Gettin’ Outta This Place” hosted by the Liberal Arts Forum, a student-run and Student Government Association-funded program that brings to campus each year guests who foster conversations about current interdisciplinary topics.
Kerman served just over a year in prison after a federal court convicted her of money laundering for a drug kingpin, an experience she recounted with remorse to her audience. The 1992 graduate of Smith College admitted to making poor post-college choices when she became involved with a “worldly woman” who had ties to the drug operation.
After her discharge in 2005, Kerman committed to telling the stories of the women she met and befriended in the Federal Correctional Institution in Danbury, Connecticut. Her memoir, “Orange is the New Black: My Year in a Women’s Prison,” caught the attention of Jenji Kohan, who turned the book into an Emmy and Peabody Award-winning original series for Netflix.
Kerman today works as a communications consultant for nonprofits and serves on the board of the Women’s Prison Association. She frequently speaks around the country on law, crime, gender and women’s studies, and more. Her advocacy has earned her recognition from several national groups.
“The conditions of confinement will have a powerful effect on your mental, emotional and physical well-being,” Kerman said.
In Kerman’s case, a minimum security assignment brought her together with other women who showed kindness from the very first day she started serving her sentence. Inmates approached her within hours of arrival, asking whether she had a toothbrush and shower shoes, items the Bureau of Prisons did not provide.
Another inmate, a woman who enjoyed artistic projects, would soon create a nametag with script letters and a sticker to keep on her bunk.
“To me, that was a powerful signal,” Kerman said. “That’s not to suggest prison is a nice place to live. It’s not. Prisons are intentionally built to be harsh and difficult places to live. That’s part of the purpose of prison.”
Who gets locked away? Kerman noted that one third all women incarcerated in the world are jailed in the United States. When combined with those under the supervision of probation and parole offices, more than 1 million women are currently serving some form of sentence. She added that the percentage of women incarcerated in American prisons has grown 650 percent over the past four decades.
And it’s not just women harmed by prison sentences, two thirds of which are for nonviolent crimes, Kerman said. More than 1.3 million dependent children have a mother in the criminal justice system.
“When we choose to lock up a woman, it is very unlikely she is the only person being punished by that prison sentence,” Kerman said. “When a family loses a father to prison or jail, it is devastating to that family. But when it’s a mother, the effect is seismic, and we know that kids are five times more likely to go into a foster care system when we incarcerate the mother.”
Race, class, gender and power imbalance all affect the probability of a women serving jail time for particular offenses, Kerman said. The criminal justice system for much of American history has played a role in maintaining a racial hierarchy. The system was used to preserve slavery. It was also used to punish those who violated Jim Crow laws.
“You couldn’t talk about the American criminal justice system and not talk about race,” she said. “We know that the law of the land today is racial equality, but it’s clear – we see almost every day on the nightly news, on our streets, in hard data – that the criminal justice system has not caught up with some of the progress we’ve made in other areas in this country. It’s time for that to happen.”
Before concluding her program with questions from the audience that asked her about details of prison, and her opinions on the Netflix series based on her memoir, Kerman suggested that Americans would get a better return on their tax dollars by investing in the kinds of institutions that foster community instead of those that keep people locked away for nonviolent crimes.
“We’re here in this amazing institution, this beautiful university, which is a great place that’s been here year after year, serving people who come to learn. This is the kind of institution we need (more of),” Kerman said. “We also need art institutions, and hospitals. And community health centers. And good public schools. … When we see communities that have these kinds of institutions, they’re vibrant, and they’re safe.”