{"id":800,"date":"2018-10-04T14:28:54","date_gmt":"2018-10-04T18:28:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/landishouse\/?p=800"},"modified":"2018-10-04T15:20:19","modified_gmt":"2018-10-04T19:20:19","slug":"piper-kerman-and-justice-reform","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/officeofequityandinclusivity\/2018\/10\/04\/piper-kerman-and-justice-reform\/","title":{"rendered":"Piper Kerman and Justice Reform"},"content":{"rendered":"

On Friday, September 21, Piper Kerman, acclaimed author and activist, spoke to the Dickinson community. Ms. Kerman used the platform of the Poitras-Gleim Lecture<\/a>, an annual event celebrating interdisciplinary exploration into societal problems, to discuss the complex issue of justice reform. Justice reform, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center<\/a><\/u>, attempts \u201cto reform the criminal justice and immigration enforcement systems so they operate fairly and equitably; to ensure the dignity and humanity of those interacting with these systems; and to reduce the population of jailed, detained, and incarcerated juveniles and adults in the United States.\u201d Ms. Kerman specifically focused on the ways that gender impacts incarcerated persons\u2019 experiences.<\/p>\n

As depicted in her hit Netflix series and popular memoir Orange is the New Black<\/em><\/a>, Ms. Kerman spent 13 months incarcerated in the Federal Correctional Institution in Danbury, Connecticut. Drawing from her experiences, she participated in a nuanced overview of the many flaws of America\u2019s mass incarceration problem As Ms. Kerman discussed, she is an unlikely victim of our country\u2019s ineffective criminal justice policies.\u00a0 As a white, educated, financially stable woman, she is not representative of the demographic discriminations that are embedded in our correctional systems.<\/p>\n

As Ms. Kerman put it, our justice system is \u201cbuilt by and designed for men.\u201d In many ways, therefore, it fails to meet the meet the needs of its female-identifying inmates. Here is a brief overview of some of the problems that Ms. Kerman outlined.<\/p>\n