Orange Is the New Black Freedom and Confinement

This is a startling statistic. Do this many people deserve to have their freedoms taken away? Why or why not?

You know your freedoms are limited when you get excited about having two bathrooms to choose from, both of which are probably a few rungs down the ladder from your average port-a-potty.

That's prison for you. It's like Disney World with all of the lines and none of the rides. What do you think—are lines symbolic of something bigger?

Even a bus ride just a few miles away to do construction work feels like a shuttle to a theme park.

These women just got transferred to Danbury from an even stricter prison, one with no true outdoor area. It has to be rough to not only be in jail, but to be stuck inside 24/7 for who knows how many months. Every drop of rain feels like freedom.

Danbury is made up of two separate prisons, and when Nina moves to the other as part of a drug program, Piper knows that she might not ever see her again. They don't have the freedom to go back and forth between facilities.

Just like being immersed in a foreign country and learning to speak the language faster, being immersed in the confinement of prison means you learn the language of prison faster… and you forget your native language of freedom.

Sometimes, not even pregnant women get an exemption from the restraining measures that are used in prison. What do they think she's going to do, strangle someone to death with her newborn's umbilical cord?

They're already locked in a cage all day; they don't need the news media rubbing it in by gawking at them from above.

This is from Pom-Pom's sad letter. After getting released from prison, she finds herself struggling for food and sleeping on the floor—in a perverse way, prison almost seems like an upgrade from that kind of life.