The TV series “Orange is the New Black” is a captivating series Piper Chapman (Taylor Schilling) who is the ‘star’ of the show. Piper is a public relations executive with a career and a fiance when her past suddenly catches up to her. In her mid-30s she is sentenced to spend time in a minimum-security women's prison in Connecticut for her association with a drug runner 10 years earlier. This Netflix Original series is based on the book of the same title. Forced to trade power suits for Prison Orange, Chapman makes her way through the corrections system and adjusts to life behind bars, making friends with the many eccentric, unusual and unexpected people she meets.
During the exhilarating series, Piper finds herself coming into contact with other prisoners who hate her and absolutely adore her. The way Taylor pursues the character, Piper Chapman shows the viewers what kind of person Piper really is, Piper is pursued to be a “two faced” “privileged white girl” . As Piper continues to backstab other cell mates and family members the series progresses and Piper continues to encounter
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For example Suzanne (Crazy Eyes) was hard-done-by “special” child, whom was adopted into a critical family who didn't accept her for her extreme personality. As her story is told she is shown as a hard working, bright and bubbly person. The crime Suzanne committed, she was not guilty for, because of her personality and her “special mind” she was accused as guilty and was unfairly sentenced. This is an example of how the people are wrongfully sentenced because of skin color. Each episode within the four seasons captivates the viewers in a way that after each episode, you’re so eager to watch the next to find out what
The first character who is unlikely to get off the street is Amber. Amber is street smart and incredibly alone. Amber can’t go one conversation without saying every bad word known to man. Amber struggles with prostitution, and she is pregnant. When she talked to Dylan, she was very mad at him for leaving
In “The Ease of Living”, Jason’s mother decided to use the money she had saved up to send him to Florida to spend the summer with his grandfather. The mother made the decision to keep him away from the boys back home. It was the beginning of the summer and two young boys had already been killed. Jason’s friend would also sit around and smoke blunts on their spare time. Similarly, in “Dance for me” a young African American is part of a private school and due to her color the girls ask her for weed. On the contrary the protagonist didn’t even know where to buy weed from nor any of the terms related to the use of weed. In “Some Other Kind of Happiness” Teddy, the protagonist’s uncle is a drug addict attempting to pick himself up after he was left by his girlfriend. The continuous presentation of African Americans being involved with drugs and delinquencies can be offensive coming from someone of a different race. A white person making those stories would promptly be interpreted as categorizing the African American community whether those were their intentions or
Just Mercy’s Bryan Stevenson exposes some of these disparities woven around his presentation of the Walter McMillian case, and the overrepresentation of African-American men in our criminal justice system. His accounts of actors in the criminal justice system such as Judge Robert E. Lee and the D.A. Tom Chapman who refused to open up the case or provide support regardless of the overwhelmingly amount of inconsistencies found in the case. The fact that there were instances where policemen paid people off to testify falsely against McMillian others on death row significantly supports this perpetuation of racism. For many of the people of color featured in Stevenson’s book, the justice system was unfair to them wrongfully or excessively punishing them for crimes both violent and nonviolent compared to their white counterparts. Racism towards those of color has caused a “lack of concern and responsiveness by police, prosecutors, and victims’ services providers” and ultimately leads to the mass incarceration of this population (Stevenson, 2014, p. 141). Moreover the lack of diversity within the jury system and those in power plays into the already existing racism. African-American men are quickly becoming disenfranchised in our country through such racist biases leading to over 1/3 of this population “missing” from the overall American population because they are within the criminal justice
All in all, Kerman’s year sentence in jail opened her eyes to some of the many problems within the federal prison system. She witnessed favoritism, abuse, health violations, etc. that helped her realize that she never wanted to go back to prison, despite all the true friendships she made. Through her use of rhetoric, mainly ethos, Kerman showed her audience a firsthand account of what an actual prison sentence is like. She also explored the idea of how one bad decision can change a person’s life forever.
Throughout the entire film, viewers can witness how Steven Avery is being poorly treated because of his socioeconomic status, and the fact that he is different from everyone in the Manitowoc County. Steven was lied on, picked on, and accused of committing a crime he did not commit, all because he was looked down upon and viewed as being less of a person than everyone else in the community. Watching this episode invokes an emotion that is prevalent today with our justice system. Many minorities are falsely accused and falsely imprisoned due to personal vendettas from private citizens or members of the law enforcement. Others are disfranchised due to their socioeconomic status. Ultimately, there are numerous innocent men and women serving life sentences and are on death row for crimes they did not commit. As an illustration, in the year of 2007, Davontae Sanford, who was just 14 years old at the time, was wrongfully convicted of murdering four people and sentenced 90 years in prison. Sandford was an individual a part of the lower social class, coming from a rough part of Detroit, he was a victim of poverty. He stated how he was such a naïve kid and was coerced by detectives and his defense attorney to confess and plead guilty to murders he did not commit. Sanford told how his attorney commented, “you’re a black kid from the ghetto; these white people from the suburbs are gonna come in here and they’re gonna find you guilty.” He was exonerated June of 2016 after the real offender came forward and denied Sanford’s involvement in the murder. What is exposed as this bigger picture is how the criminal justice system is corrupted, being prejudice and stereotyping individuals based on their socioeconomic status is how the system seems to incarcerate people and sad to say,
“In the criminal justice system, sexually based offenses are considered especially heinous. In New York City, the dedicated detectives who investigate these vicious felonies are members of an elite squad known as the Special Victims Unit….” This short monologue is the opening for Dick Wolf’s fictional television show, Law & Order: Special Victims Unit. This show follows the detectives of the Sixteenth Precinct in Manhattan, New York City through their lives and the cases they work day after day. In this unit, it is Detective Olivia Benson who has inspired me with her dedication and strength to her job and the real life connections that have been created from this character.
In her book The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness, Michelle Alexander states that we still use our criminal justice system to “label people of color ‘criminals’ and then engage i...
Gender and Race play the most prominent role in the criminal justice system. As seen in the movie Central Park 5, five African American boys were charged with the rape of the a white women. In class decision we’ve discussed how the media explodes when it reports cross-racial crimes. The Central Park 5 were known everywhere and even terms were being made up during the process such as wilding. Also, during one of the class discussions it was brought up that victims of crime are of the same race of the perpetrator. However, the media likes to sensationalize crime of the victim being of a different race, because it makes for a good story. By doing this, the media does create more of a division of race. As seen in the video Donald Trump was trying
For example, “when one black individual dares to violate the restrictions, he or she was used as an example to reiterate to the entire race that the group would continually be held responsible for the actions of the individual. Thus an accusation of rape could lead not only to the accused black man being lynched and burned, but to the burning of black homes and the whipping or lynching of other black individuals as well” (Collins 921). Similarly talking about racial discrimination, in the United States, if somebody commits violent activity, it is judged, viewed and treated differently depending upon that person’s race and gender, For example, Collins mentions “the case of Mumia Abu-Jamal, an African-American journalist, who was accused of murdering a white police officer, received a death penalty and many false evidence, coerced eye-witness and inadequate legal counsel were presented against him to arrest him” (Collins 922). Since he is a black race person, he is punished although he is innocent.
2010, “Racial Disparities in Sentencing: Implications for the Criminal Justice System and the African American Community”, African Journal of Criminology and Justice Studies 4(1): 1-31, in this Albonetti’s study is discussed in which it was found that minority status alone accounted for an additional sentence length of “one to seven months.” African American defendants were “likely to receive pretrial release but were more likely to be convicted, and be given harsher sentences after conviction than white defendants charged with the same crimes.” One of the reasons behind this are the sentencing laws, it is seen that these laws are designed in a way that they tend to be harsher towards a certain group of people, generally towards the people of color than others thus leading to inequality with the sentencing
Though one might argue that the issue is drugs, race is a consistent trait that is common in all cases of mass incarceration.
For much of the twentieth century, punishment and crime have portrayed some of the most powerful signs of the racial divide in the United States. Marginalized and the poor remains the most biased against the criminal justice scheme (Barak, 2010). Throughout the Americas. racial minorities were tried in white courtrooms by white juries. Class and race are challenging.
When a person of color is being sentenced the unjustness of sentencing is blatantly shown such as in the article Race Sentencing and Testimony which stated, “ These scholars conclude that black male arrestees “face significantly more severe charges conditional on arrest offense and other observed characteristics” and attribute this primarily to prosecution charging decisions” (Mauer 4). This piece of writing explains that for no other reason than race do these people get convicted far more significantly than others who have the same charge but are white, which continues as far as giving a person of color the max sentence that they can have on a certain charge just for the color of their skin. The justice system has turned into the opposite of what it claims to be and continues to grow as a racist overseer, bashing down on those that they believe should be punished as harshly as possible simply for the color of their skin. The system has gone as deep as to making it so that even if a person has not committed a crime, but are being charged for it they can agree to a plea bargain, which makes it so even though the person did not do it the system is going to have them convicted of it anyway (Quigley 1). “As one young man told me ‘who wouldn’t rather do three years for a crime they didn’t commit than risk twenty-five years
...rought attention to the racial issues in death penalty sentencing which will be explained by relevant data on the subject.
Race as we know it has such a powerful contribution to the lives of people that it can have life or death consequences. A person should not be judged for their appearance. Many racial profiling victims walk away with traffic tickets, but too often for others the outcome of racial profiling is death. There are many examples of the idea of what it means to have a racial profile. Profiling by using the race of a person to determine which driver to stop for minor traffic violations.