“Mandatory minimum sentences for drug offenses are the prime reason that the U.S. prison population has ballooned since the 1980s to over 2.5 million people, a nearly 300% increase. We now lock up one out of every hundred adults, far… — Piper Kerman Copy Share Image
“In the federal system alone there were 90,000 prisoners locked up for drug offenses, compared with about 40,000 for violent crimes. A federal prisoner costs at least $30,000 a year to incarcerate, and females actually cost more.” — Piper Kerman Copy Share Image
“I looked down at the doors of the forbidden Dorms and studiously examined the bulletin boards covered with incomprehensible information about events and rules… — Piper Kerman Copy Share Image
“Stoicism sure comes in handy when they take away your underpants. But how to reconcile it with one's insatiable need for other people?” — Piper Kerman Copy Share Image
“Some of the mothers looked overwhelmed - they were no longer accustomed to supervising their own kids in a normal, day-to-day way.” — Piper Kerman Copy Share Image
“The female guard in R&D explained that they had no women's street clothes, so she gave me the smallest pair of men's jeans they… — Piper Kerman Copy Share Image
“I had forgotten about the pleasures of college radio, the exquisite randomness of what got played, the twenty-minute between-songs banter of nineteen-year-olds, the smack… — Piper Kerman Copy Share Image
“I had long recognized that faith helped people understand their relationship to their community. In the best cases it helped women in Danbury focus… — Piper Kerman Copy Share Image
“We have a racially based justice system that overpunishes, fails to rehabilitate, and doesn't make us safer.” — Piper Kerman Copy Share Image
“If he is a half-decent human being, he will find himself the object of crushes. If he is a cocky bastard, even more so.” — Piper Kerman Copy Share Image
“If you had the misfortune of having the government intimately involved with your life, whether via public housing or Medicaid or food stamps, then… — Piper Kerman Copy Share Image
“Prison is quite literally a ghetto in the most classic sense of the world, a place where the U.S. government now puts not only… — Piper Kerman Copy Share Image
“He told us that it was important to eat right, exercise, and treat your body as a temple. But he didn't tell us how… — Piper Kerman Copy Share Image
“According to the CDC, cigarettes kill over 435,000 people a year in the United States. Most of us in Danbury were locked away for… — Piper Kerman Copy Share Image
