Piper Kerman on the future of the prison system
•
Piper Kerman, acclaimed author of Orange is the New Black, joined us at The Battery to share her true insider’s perspective on the prison system and shed light on big opportunities to make a change. Kerman spoke as part of a lecture series for Battery Powered, The Battery’s new member-funded program to back organizations that have a chance of making society stronger. The program is built around educational themes that guide learning and engagement. The inaugural pilot theme this fall is The California Prison System, and members have spent the past three months learning about key interventions in the system, including alternative pathways, sentencing reform, and re-entry programs.
Kerman joined Battery Powered members in a frank and open discussion about her perspective on the criminal justice system and her own experiences with incarceration. Michael Romano moderated the discussion and offered key insight into the California context. Romano is a professor at Stanford Law and Director of the Three Strikes Project.
“What I witnessed in prison shocked me,” said Kerman. She explained that there was an incredible feeling of pointlessness on the inside. “Most of the women there with me were in for non-violent crimes, and their sentences were neither transformative nor preventative.”
Kerman stressed that systemic change requires both community support from the outside and greater understanding and incentives on the inside. “The biggest difference that I saw in my friends during their re-entry was family. If they had a family to go home to, one that was ready for them and not in crisis,” said Kerman, “then they would make it.” She added that if she had not had the benefit of certain privileges herself—a college education, loved ones who supported her, and the means to hire an expensive defense attorney—her re-entry would have gone much differently, and she likely would not have had the courage or the perspective to write her memoir. “I can imagine what my life would have been without prison,” she said, “but I cannot imagine what it would have been like had I not gone to college.”
As the conversation deepened, Kerman was clear about the areas where she saw the most change happening. “I focus on the front end,” she said without hesitation. “By that I mean sentencing and public defense services reform, and young people. … Youth are dangerous,” she said with a smile, “but they also hold the greatest prospect for change.”
Romano closed the discussion with questions from the audience, and with a nod to some of the biggest reforms creating real shifts in the prison system. When asked by a Battery Powered member how Silicon Valley is uniquely positioned to help make a change, Romano and Kerman responded that recent policy campaigns, though highly effective, take a lot of money to succeed. Romano cited the state’s recent decision to pass Proposition 47, the measure that reduced prison sentences for certain drug and theft crimes. This ballot measure came on the heels of growing awareness and public opinion around issues of criminal justice in California.
Before Proposition 47, there was the 2012 landmark decision Proposition 36, which revised California’s decades old “Three Strikes Law” to allow a life sentence only when the third-strike offense was serious or violent. Altogether in 2012, more than 8,000 people were serving life sentences under the law, 3,000 of whom were eligible for resentencing after it passed. The campaign received significant funding from Silicon Valley’s top entrepreneurs.
Victories like these ballot initiatives are part of the building momentum around prison system reform that both Kerman and Romano have devoted their lives to supporting. They show that individuals can make a difference in large scale public policy change. Even more so if those individuals are social innovators and influencers; after all, it wasn’t until Jay Z openly supported Prop 47 last summer that the initiative gained traction.
In her own way, Piper Kerman also fits this model; she uses her celebrity to advance reforms and advocate for people still disadvantaged by the system. What’s more, her narrative has given voice to a cast of protagonists who were previously invisible: incarcerated women. “When we push people to the margins and police some groups of people more than others, we also funnel them into the justice system. So if you care about poverty,” said Kerman, “and about issues of race and economic justice, then you kind of have to care about criminal justice.”
The vision for a better justice system and the approaches to change that Kerman earmarked for us can be seen in the incredible work of the 37 organizations that proposed projects to break the cycle of incarceration with funding from Battery Powered. Of those organizations, many are dedicated to connecting recently released inmates to services; others are focused on reforms to correct unjust and disproportionate sentencing; still others are creating community youth programs and other alternatives to incarceration.
To find out more about each unique approach and read stories of frontline work from the organizations, visit the Battery Powered site. There, you can relive Expert Night and Organization Night and review all 37 projects. Even if you’re not a member you might find a reason to get involved, hidden somewhere in those stories of limitless change and possibility.
Kerman joined Battery Powered members in a frank and open discussion about her perspective on the criminal justice system and her own experiences with incarceration. Michael Romano moderated the discussion and offered key insight into the California context. Romano is a professor at Stanford Law and Director of the Three Strikes Project.
“What I witnessed in prison shocked me,” said Kerman. She explained that there was an incredible feeling of pointlessness on the inside. “Most of the women there with me were in for non-violent crimes, and their sentences were neither transformative nor preventative.”
Kerman stressed that systemic change requires both community support from the outside and greater understanding and incentives on the inside. “The biggest difference that I saw in my friends during their re-entry was family. If they had a family to go home to, one that was ready for them and not in crisis,” said Kerman, “then they would make it.” She added that if she had not had the benefit of certain privileges herself—a college education, loved ones who supported her, and the means to hire an expensive defense attorney—her re-entry would have gone much differently, and she likely would not have had the courage or the perspective to write her memoir. “I can imagine what my life would have been without prison,” she said, “but I cannot imagine what it would have been like had I not gone to college.”
As the conversation deepened, Kerman was clear about the areas where she saw the most change happening. “I focus on the front end,” she said without hesitation. “By that I mean sentencing and public defense services reform, and young people. … Youth are dangerous,” she said with a smile, “but they also hold the greatest prospect for change.”
Romano closed the discussion with questions from the audience, and with a nod to some of the biggest reforms creating real shifts in the prison system. When asked by a Battery Powered member how Silicon Valley is uniquely positioned to help make a change, Romano and Kerman responded that recent policy campaigns, though highly effective, take a lot of money to succeed. Romano cited the state’s recent decision to pass Proposition 47, the measure that reduced prison sentences for certain drug and theft crimes. This ballot measure came on the heels of growing awareness and public opinion around issues of criminal justice in California.
Before Proposition 47, there was the 2012 landmark decision Proposition 36, which revised California’s decades old “Three Strikes Law” to allow a life sentence only when the third-strike offense was serious or violent. Altogether in 2012, more than 8,000 people were serving life sentences under the law, 3,000 of whom were eligible for resentencing after it passed. The campaign received significant funding from Silicon Valley’s top entrepreneurs.
Victories like these ballot initiatives are part of the building momentum around prison system reform that both Kerman and Romano have devoted their lives to supporting. They show that individuals can make a difference in large scale public policy change. Even more so if those individuals are social innovators and influencers; after all, it wasn’t until Jay Z openly supported Prop 47 last summer that the initiative gained traction.
In her own way, Piper Kerman also fits this model; she uses her celebrity to advance reforms and advocate for people still disadvantaged by the system. What’s more, her narrative has given voice to a cast of protagonists who were previously invisible: incarcerated women. “When we push people to the margins and police some groups of people more than others, we also funnel them into the justice system. So if you care about poverty,” said Kerman, “and about issues of race and economic justice, then you kind of have to care about criminal justice.”
The vision for a better justice system and the approaches to change that Kerman earmarked for us can be seen in the incredible work of the 37 organizations that proposed projects to break the cycle of incarceration with funding from Battery Powered. Of those organizations, many are dedicated to connecting recently released inmates to services; others are focused on reforms to correct unjust and disproportionate sentencing; still others are creating community youth programs and other alternatives to incarceration.
To find out more about each unique approach and read stories of frontline work from the organizations, visit the Battery Powered site. There, you can relive Expert Night and Organization Night and review all 37 projects. Even if you’re not a member you might find a reason to get involved, hidden somewhere in those stories of limitless change and possibility.