This weekend, Netflix’s series, ‘Orange is the New Black’ began and for those of you who didn’t spend the weekend binge-watching, I’ll share with you a couple of highlights that relate to registered citizens.
First, if you have been in solitary and without any connection to the outside world for the past few years, the series is about life inside a women’s federal prison.
Although the stories are fictional and take place inside a correctional institution that does not really exist, they are based on the real-life experiences of the creator, who actually did spend time in a federal prison. For those of us who also spent time inside federal prison, the show is eerily accurate and difficult to watch without spurring a PTSD episode.
Naturally, we didn’t have bodies buried in the prison garden (we didn’t have a prison garden) so some of the story lines are a bit exaggerated, but most are not. The corruption is rampant. Incompetent and derelict guards run the place and facilitate most of the illegal activity that takes place behind the fence. Sadly also true, the federal prison system is nothing more than a human warehouse that breeds anger, frustration and resentment that returns people to society in worse condition than they took them in.
In episode three this season, there’s a story-line that involves sex offenders. As described in Yahoo TV, “Soso was a volunteer canvasser, trying to get signatures on a petition to stop a Wal-Mart from being built locally, so a park could be erected in the location instead. Her ex-boyfriend, Ethan, bet her $50, that she couldn’t obtain the signature of a local convicted sex offender on her petition. She gets the signature, and finds out the truth about the sex offender: he and another adult had sex on what they thought was an abandoned beach, but there was a man present who filmed it and turned them in. He was convicted, and after he had to go around his neighborhood informing everyone of his status, rumors started that he was actually a pedophile. She went off to collect her cash but Ethan dismissed her “win,” saying it wasn’t a big deal, because the sex offender was probably some guy who got his life ruined by a conviction on a technicality, as Ethan just read an article at Salon.com on that topic. Soso, furious that he was right, lied and said he was actually a very scary guy who tried to seduce her, after bragging to her that he’d stalked and assaulted a nine-year-old girl at his church.”
The flashback had no relevance to the series, but was an interesting commentary into what society perceives a sex offender to be and how easy it is to denigrate a sex offender.
First, upon learning there is a “sex offender” in the community, the initial reaction is that the individual is one to fear and avoid. Even without knowing what the offense was.
Second, the registered citizen was referred to as a “pedophile” and “child molester” even though we later learned that his crime had nothing to do with a child.
Third, registered citizens face residual consequences and punishments at every turn. In this case, the petition was to stop a Wal-Mart from being built and instead put in a park. The registered citizen realizes that in the event a park is built in the community it will displace him from his home because of the residency restriction.
Finally, even though he was perfectly appropriate with Soso, she lied and said he tried to assault her and because of his stigma, everyone believed her.
You don’t have to watch the season to comprehend what the series is showing us. In most cases, if you are reading this, you lived it and know first hand! The lesson that we are hoping comes from this is that it will open people’s eyes to what is really going on in this country. Mass Incarceration, government corruption and registration of citizens is not what is supposed to be taking place in the “land of the free”.
We applaud Piper Kerman (upon whose life the series is based) and Jenji Kohan who created and writes for the series, for their courage in exposing a true human rights tragedy.
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