I was a bit late in watching "Orange is the New Black." Once I started it, though, I got hooked. I wasn’t expecting it to be so developed and complex. I was pleasantly surprised.

One thing I particularly like about the show is that it shows convicts in a human light. It develops its many characters and refuses to let viewers casually view them as one label, i.e. “druggie,” and then write them off as subhuman scum. Even the often abominable prison guards are rounded out. It shows viewers many complex people, which I’d venture to say is somewhat rare these days. It’s a complicated show as a whole.

I also like the sometimes subtle, sometimes not so subtle critiques that the show makes about the prison system. How many people there need mental assistance, but instead are thrown into prison. How solitary confinement is inhumane. How giving one human power over another tends to corrupt that human. Remember the episode where Caputo was talking to CO Bayley about how the job turns people into monsters? Well, there is historic proof of that with the Stanford Prison Experiment. It also obviously deals with issues of race and justice, both subtly and non-subtly. One particular subtle occasion, or at least one that I took to be, is when Linda’s backstory is shown. She could have just as easily been in prison with the rest of them. So, why wasn’t she? Was it white privilege? Did she get lucky with the cop that she got?

I guess that’s another thing I like about the show. I came expecting to be sucked into a state of vegetative passive consumption of entertainment, but as I kept watching, instead I found myself perturbed and considering all the issues involved with the penal system. I plan to do more reading and research on the subject. I plan to read Kerman’s book as well. Kerman herself has been working to alleviate some issues; she testified before the Senate in 2014 against the use of solitary confinement (though she touched on other issues as well, including mental health and sexual abuse), and a cursory glance at her Twitter feed reveals concern about the justice system, the Black Lives Matter movement and politics, and she, indeed, has come to represent a sort of figurehead for activism relating to the penal system, especially as it affects women.

OITNB is a show that has left me unsettled, and I’m glad that it has. I don’t know much about the penal system, but it doesn’t take much to see that it is not effective, at least not as far as reducing crime goes.

And a word about crime: the definition is, technically speaking, relative. It’s relative to those making the laws, which sometimes may mean those who may not have anyone’s best interest in mind other than their own. This is troubling, not just because the humans making laws might be imperfect and/or corrupt, not just because breaking laws means people could be thrown into a system that has long-lasting repercussions that are so devastating to life, but also because of the intense stigma against those who break laws, a stigma that is harder to shake given that ex-cons must disclose their pasts over and over (such as, when applying for jobs).

There is no such thing as clear-cut, black-and-white justice, and when a system (not to mention a system that has such power) exists, a system that seems to pretend to operate on the basis that there is, well, is it really any surprise that such horrendous problems and injustices arise?