The Woman Who Lived 'Orange Is the New Black' Warns Congress About Solitary Confinement
Orange Is the New Black may be a dark comedy, but the woman who lived the story wants America to know that nothing's funny about being on the inside, especially inside solitary confinement.
Piper Kerman, whose 2010 prison account was adapted into a Netflix original series last year and became an instant binge-watching success, testified before a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing Tuesday about the use of solitary confinement by the federal Bureau of Prisons.
"Warnings of solitary confinement came very quickly, and very minor infractions could send you to the SHU," Kerman said of her first days in prison, using an acronym for security housing unit, a term for solitary confinement. Kerman served 13 months of a 15-month sentence in a minimum-security federal prison in Connecticut for her involvement in a then-decade-old drug-money laundering scheme.
When another inmate overheard Kerman joking about a hunger strike to protest the poor prison food, the woman told her, "Listen, honey, I know you just got here so I know that you don't know what's what. That kind of shit you're talking about, hunger strikes, that kind of shit, that's inciting a riot. They will lock your ass up in SHU in a heartbeat. So take a tip from me and watch what you say."
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