The Huge Challenges of Building a Life After Prison

Editor's Note -- One of the important themes in Piper Kerman's Orange is the New Black: My Year In a Women's Prison is the difficulty so many women prisoners have with re-entry. As the fastest growing prison population in the U.S., women face daunting challenges when it comes to fulfilling their basic needs once they leave prison, including finding a job and somewhere to live. As Kerman would learn, while the "correctional" system provides some programming on how to live a successful life on the outside, very little of it is of practical value. The following excerpt is adapted from two chapters of the book.

Go here to read AlterNet's interview with Piper Kerman.

September 16 was the day of the prison Job Fair, an annual Danbury Federal Correctional Institution event that paid lip service to the fact that its prisoners would rejoin the world. So far I had witnessed no meaningful effort to prepare inmates for successful reentry into society, other than the handful of women who had gone through the intensive drug treatment program. Maybe the Job Fair would impart some useful information to the crowd.

I was lucky to have a job waiting for me when I went home: a generous friend had created a position for me at the company he ran. Every time he came to visit me, Dan would say, "Would you hurry up and get out of here? The marketing department needs you!"

Hardly any of the women I knew in Danbury were as fortunate. The top three worries for women getting released from prison are usually: reuniting with their children (if they are a single mother, they have often lost their parental rights); housing (a huge problem for people with a record); and employment. I had written enough jailhouse résumés by now to know that a lot of the ladies had only worked in the (enormous) underground economy. Outside the mainstream, they didn't have the first notion of how to break into it. So far, nothing about prison was changing that reality.

A bald guy from the central BOP office in Washington, who seemed nervous, opened the Fair and welcomed us. Programs were handed out, folded photocopies with a drawing of an owl on the cover. Below the owl it read: be wise -- Women In Secured Employment. On the back of the program were Andy Rooney quotes.

Various companies had committed to participating in the event, many of them nonprofits. The day would include a panel discussion on "Emerging Jobs in the Workforce & How to Land One," mock job interviews, and Mary Wilson, the legendary Motown singer from the Supremes, was going to deliver a motivational speech. That I had to see. But first, Professional Appareling!

Professional Appareling was run by Dress for Success, the nonprofit that helps disadvantaged women get business-appropriate clothes. A jovial middle-aged woman briefed us on the dos and don'ts of outfits for job interviews, then asked for volunteers. Vanessa almost broke her seatmate's nose waving her arm madly, so the woman had no choice but to pick her. And then in the blink of an eye I found myself standing at the front of the room with my Amazonian neighbor, Delicious, and Pom-Pom. "These lovely ladies are going to help us to demonstrate the dos and don'ts," said the volunteer brightly.

She herded us into the bathroom, then passed out togs. She gave Delicious a sharp, almost Japanese-looking black suit; Pom-Pom, a pink suit that looked like she was going to church in the South. I got a hideously dowdy and itchy burgundy outfit. And for Vanessa? A fuchsia silk cocktail dress with beading on the chest. "Hurry up ladies!"

We each got a turn on the catwalk, much to the glee of our fellow prisoners, who whooped and whistled. They went bananas when they caught sight of Vanessa, who basked in the glory, tossing her curls. Then we were lined up, and the volunteer explained who was a job-interview do, and who was a don't. Delicious's outfit was deemed too "edgy"; Pom-Pom's was too "sweet." Vanessa looked crestfallen when she heard that she was wearing "the last kind of thing you would want for an interview." "What kind of job are we talking about?" she asked plaintively.