Convicted felon and former NYPD commissioner Bernard Kerik says that viewers have “no idea” how painfully real the Netflix hit series “Orange is the New Black” really is.
“The unfortunate thing is that people look at it as entertainment and I don’t think the general population that watches it realizes the realities that are behind it,” he told the Daily News. “They have no idea how real it is.”
Like Piper, the show’s main character, Kerik came from a position of privilege before serving time in the federal pen. While Piper was locked up for her role in a drug ring, the man who was NYPD’s head honcho on 9/11 served a little over three years for tax fraud and other felonies as part of his high-profile corruption case.
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Kerik first read “Orange is the New Black” — the memoir on which the show is based – before his 2013 release from prison.
“I read the book inside and I thought, ‘Jesus Christ, she hit it right on the head. Every detail,'” he said. Naturally, he admitted, the Netflix series is dramatized, sometimes in unrealistic ways — but overall, it’s shockingly accurate.
“It shows the reality that the longer you’re in prison, the worse the problem is when you come out,” he said. Piper, for instance, starts the series as a naive nerd, utterly lacking anything resembling street smarts. By the third season, she’s ruthlessly running an (admittedly unrealistic) underground panty-smuggling ring.
Kerik said that’s pretty accurate and pointed to a similar example he saw behind bars. One of his fellow inmates was “a marine who sold a pair of night vision goggles on eBay and was sentenced to 30 months. When he came in he was a marine — he spit-shined his boots, had a buzz cut. Twenty-four months later when he left, he was a complete t—, running around with his pants hanging off, hair grown out and no more yes ma’am, yes sir.
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“He’d completely changed, that’s reality. The show shows some of that — but do people understand that’s real?”
Some aspects of the show are based on reality, but slightly exaggerated.
For instance, there are contentious racial division in the fictional Litchfield, where black and white inmates even claim separate bathrooms.
Where he did time, Kerik said, “there were racial issues, sure, but not at the same level that the show portrays.” Though he noted that the dynamics of men’s and women’s prisons are different in some ways, he said, “I think it’s a little overdone.”
Also, he said, the corruption might be a little exaggerated.
“The corruption by the guards, the sexual stuff with the officers, I don’t know. I’m not saying it doesn’t happen but I never saw it — but I was in a men’s institution.
He added, “I’ve run one of the biggest systems in the country and we had that stuff but it wasn’t as systematic and there wasn’t as much of it.”
One of the things that rang true for Kerik was the show’s depiction of the reasons people end up behind bars.
“There are people in prison with Piper who really didn’t need to be in prison, they needed drug treatment and had they had drug treatment on the outside they wouldn’t be there or if their boyfriend had gotten treatment, they wouldn’t be there. If they hadn’t grown up in the neighborhood they did, they wouldn’t be there.”
From his own experiences — both behind bars and as the head of Rikers Island — Kerik knows that’s accurate.
Like Piper, Kerik was held in a minimum security prison camp. On the small screen, Litchfield prison camp is no walk in the park — sometimes it’s a pretty rough place. Kerik said that’s true in real life as well.
“I don’t know how many people have said to me, ‘You were at a minimum security camp, it’s a country club.’ Really? The thing is, the deprivation of freedom is far more profound than you can imagine,” he said.
“It’s like dying with your eyes open,” he said, quoting a fellow inmate. “You sit inside and you watch your whole life go on without you in it.”
Like Piper Kerman — the memoirist whose work spawned the series — Kerik has advocated for criminal justice reform since his release. Though he didn’t offer any predictions for the fourth season, he did have some wishes for where he’d like to see the show go.
“Right now the show is sort of education tool for the American public,” he said.
“I think there’s got to be a way to show Piper getting out and getting on this (criminal justice reform) mission she’s on now. If there was a way to tie that into the show and show what has to be done, that would be great.”