A Critical Analysis of Orange Is the New Black: The Consequences of the Misrepresentation of Female Offenders

• In Event: Crime Portrayals in Popular Media

Abstract

The television series Orange Is The New Black (OITNB) serves as a useful framework to apply a macro Criminological lens to better understand women and crime. The growth of women prisoners is not a female crime wave, but evidence that we have developed a biased response to women’s [deviant] behaviors. The misrepresentation of female offenders in the show perpetuates our collective belief that women are simply behaving badly more often, rather than critically examining what social forces and policy changes lead them to engage in – and be arrested for - criminal behavior in the first place. The War on Drugs, broken windows policing, mandatory arrests, and more subjective changes in how we define concepts like violence function to widen the arrest net for women. What drives women’s involvement in these behaviors we label as criminal is primarily rooted in their economic vulnerability. Arguably, we as a collective need to change how we come to understand what we know about women and crime, and a critical analysis of the show will help spark this change.

Author

• Bethany Lee Van Brown, Loyola University, New Orleans