Piper Chapman is a middle-class white woman, educated and comfortably off, sentenced to prison for a drug-trafficking offense committed a decade earlier. She never imagined she would set foot in a prison, and her outsider's bewilderment —her failure to grasp the codes, her culture shock, her exposed privilege— is the door through which the viewer enters the prison world. But what matters is what that world teaches her: that her fellow inmates are not the figures or the stereotypes she believed, but people with complex stories. For convict criminology, Piper offers a revealing angle: that of the one who arrives from outside and learns to see.
// The theorySeeing the people behind the figures
The convict criminology of John Irwin denounces the way academic criminology treated prisoners as specimens: cases, figures, risk categories, populations to be managed. Orange Is the New Black —based on the real memoir of Piper Kerman— does the opposite, and Piper's outsider's gaze is the vehicle: through her initial astonishment and her later learning, the series unfolds the individual stories of the inmates —how they got there, what brought them, who they are—, restoring to them the humanity that statistics erase. Each of Piper's fellow inmates, a stereotype at first, is revealed as a person with a biography that explains (without excusing) her presence there. It is exactly the correction convict criminology demands: to stop counting prisoners and start listening to them.
The privilege that reveals the system
Piper's angle has a particular power: her privilege makes the system visible. Precisely because she comes from a world of resources, lawyers and expectations of fair treatment, her collision with the reality of prison exposes what habitual inmates take for granted —the arbitrariness, the daily humiliation, the treatment as cattle, the abysmal difference depending on what resources one enters with—. The series uses her outsider's gaze as a reagent that reveals structural injustice: through her indignation, we see how the system treats those with means differently from those without. Convict criminology values this angle as complementary to that of the veteran inmate: if Red gives us the knowledge of the one who has spent decades inside, Piper gives us the lucidity of the one who, coming from outside, is still scandalized by what others have already normalized —and that outrage is, in itself, a critique—.
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// The subjectThe transformation of the gaze
Piper's arc is one of a transformation of the gaze: she enters seeing her fellow inmates as «the others» —dangerous, alien, defined by their crime— and learns, the hard way, to see them as equals, with lives as complex as her own. Convict criminology reads that arc as the one all of society (and all of criminology) should travel: to move from looking at prisoners from above, as objects of study or of fear, to looking at them in the eye, as subjects. Piper herself is no saint —she is often selfish, and the series does not idealize her—, but her journey dramatizes the process by which a prejudice is undone: not with theory, but with the coexistence that forces one to see the other's humanity.
Piper Chapman
// The crackNeither "a tourist of others' suffering", nor "the voice of the inmates"
The crack with Piper is real and the series itself points to it: her privilege turns her, at times, into a tourist of others' suffering —she uses her fellow inmates' stories for her own personal growth and will leave, thanks to her resources, much sooner and better off than they will—. Convict criminology warns of this risk: the privileged outsider can illuminate the system, but must not appropriate the voice of those who truly suffer it without a safety net. The opposite crack is to take Piper as «the voice of the inmates»: she is not —she is one voice, the outsider's, valuable but partial—. The current asks precisely for the balance: to listen to all the voices from within, without letting the most privileged one eclipse the rest. Piper opens the door; those who truly live the system are the ones who have to speak through her, not be spoken for by her.
That the series, beginning with Piper, ends up giving ever more room to the stories of her fellow inmates —almost to the point of forgetting its initial protagonist— is the evolution convict criminology would applaud: the outsider serves as a door, but the story must belong to those who truly inhabit the house.
The entry door to empathy
Piper matters because her outsider's gaze fulfills a concrete social function: she is the entry door for an audience that would never look at a prison. Through someone like them —middle class, foreign to the world of crime—, the comfortable viewer lets themselves be led to a place they would otherwise avoid, and once inside, discovers the humanity of those who inhabit it. Convict criminology recognizes the value of such doors: for society to listen to prisoners, sometimes an intermediary who speaks their language is needed. But the final lesson is that the door is not the destination: Piper gets us inside, and once inside, what matters are the voices of those who stay when she leaves. Empathy begins with the outsider, but it is only completed when we hand the microphone to those who truly live the system.
Three key takeaways
- Piper Chapman brings convict criminology the outsider's angle: a privileged woman in prison whose bewilderment lets us see the humanity and the stories of the inmates that statistics reduce to figures.
- Her privilege makes the system visible: her collision exposes the arbitrariness and unequal treatment that habitual inmates have already normalized. She complements the veteran inmate (the knowledge from within) with the lucidity of the one who is still scandalized.
- Neither "a tourist of others' suffering" (her privilege makes her leave sooner and better off: she must not appropriate the voice of the rest) nor "the voice of the inmates" (she is a partial voice). The outsider is the door; the story must belong to those who live the system.
Sources · further reading
- Irwin, J. (1970). The Felon. Prentice Hall.
- Kerman, P. (2010). Orange Is the New Black. Spiegel & Grau.
- Ross, J. I. & Richards, S. C. (eds.) (2003). Convict Criminology. Wadsworth.
Case-file questionsFrequently asked questions
¿Quién es Piper Chapman?
Piper Chapman («Piper») es un villano de Orange Is the New Black, analizado en KRIMINIS con la lente de la criminología. Middle class, white, with resources: Piper never imagined setting foot in a prison.
¿Por qué Piper Chapman se convierte en villano?
Piper Chapman and convict criminology: the privileged gaze that, once behind bars, discovers the humanity that statistics erase. The angle of the one who arrives from outside.
¿Qué teoría criminológica explica a Piper Chapman?
El caso de Piper Chapman se analiza desde la Criminología Convicta. Convict criminology (Irwin) reclaims the view from within. Piper Chapman, from Orange Is the New Black, brings a particular angle: a privileged woman thrown into the prison world, whose outsider's bewilderment lets us see the humanity and the stories of the inmates that armchair criminology reduces to figures. Prison seen by someone who never believed she would end up in it.
