“Orange” Isn’t The New Black

Beatrice Codianni and Babz Rawls-Ivy met in prison. Now they have a shared, two-pronged message they want to get out. You can rebuild your life after jail. But people need to know that life behind bars for women isn’t what you see on ​“Orange Is The New Black.”

Codianni appears in the book version of ​“Orange Is The New Black,” as ​“Esposito.” She doesn’t appear in the hit TV series. Which is just as well with her.

After 15 years in federal prison on a murder-racketeering charge related to her role as a leader of the Latin Kings gang, she found a second career back home in New Haven as a journalist. For five years, she has edited an online criminal-justice reform publication, Reentry Central. She has become an influential voice on criminal-justice reform.

Rawls-Ivy spent 29 days in a federal camp (to which Codianni had been transferred before her release), not a prison. She plunged into journalism back home, as well; she is now the managing editor of the Inner CIty News.

Rawls-Ivy also hosts a weekly program on WNHH radio called ​“LoveBabz.” Codianni joined her for the most recent episode to talk about how they rebuilt their lives — from the obstacles they faced to what it’s like to date — and about the struggles of the women they met while incarcerated. You can hear the entire episode by clicking on the above sound file; you can read much of it in this rest of this article.

“These Are Real People”

Rawls-Ivy: In 2008 I self-surrendered to Danbury federal prison camp, and I met her at the front door. She was standing there with a newspaper, the New Haven Register, with my big face on the front page. And she said to me, ​“You’re going to be fine. You’re going to be fine. Just do your time, stay out of trouble. You’ll be fine.”

I didn’t know her. I didn’t know her story.

Yet.

Codianni: In 1994 I was sentenced to 15 years in federal prison on a racketeering charge. I did most of my time in Danbury in the FCI, which is behind the wire. I did the remaining [time] in the prison camp, where I met you.

Rawls-Ivy: How should we be thinking about women incarcerated?

Codianni: The United States has 5 percent of the world’s population, but 25 percent of incarcerated people in the world. When it comes to women — remember it’s 5 percent of the world’s population, but 33 percent incarcerated women are from the United States.

Rawls-Ivy:What does that say?

Codianni: That says we’re doing something wrong. Most of the women who are incarcerated are in for low-level crimes. But society’s perception of women who commit a crime is, ​“They’re no good. They should be locked away.” That has repercussions for families, for children in particular.

Rawls-Ivy: You were the sounding alarm for the Connecticut legislative body when they ere looking to close Danbury federal prison …

Codianni: It was very, very emotional. Because I received word that the women were told to pack up. They were leaving. These were women from the Northeast who were sent to Danbury, because it was the only female federal prison in the Northeast. All of a sudden they ere told they were being sent 1,1000 miles away to a newly built prison. They were going to be torn away from their families. This came a month after the federal bureau of Prisons sent a letter to all prisoners saying that family is so important.

I broke down and cried. I felt the pain of these women as they were getting ready to be sent so far away. So Reentry Central broke the story nationally. It was picked up by other people. Senators in several states in this region decided that, ​“No this can’t happen.” So they said women from the Northeast are going to be sent away to Philadelphia or Brooklyn, N.Y., to federal detention centers while they built a new prison for women.

That was two years ago. A new prison hasn’t been built.

Rawls-Ivy: What is going to happen?

Codianni: These are women with some time, not just a couple of months. They’re stuck in a place where there’s no outside recreation, there’s no programming, there’s nothing. There’s a great push to get this prison built in Danbury next to the camp and get these women [there] so they can get on with their lives. There’s a drug program in federal prison; you can get a year off your sentence. They don’t have this in Philadelphia or Boroklyn. It’s important that we get these women in and out.

Rawls-Ivy:We both know Piper. We both know her story. We read her book.

Codianni: Piper Kerman wrote a great book called ​“Orange is the New Black”. It’s on point. It was her life. But it was also about the women in Danbury. I’m Esposito in the book. Her book was great.

I was really excited when they said they were going to have a series. I couldn’t wait to see it.

Just in the beginning in the second season, I quit. I was just banging my head up against the wall.

But before this, when it first came out, the real women of Danbury, the real voices, whose stories are far more compelling than anything you see on TV, were kind of upset. We wanted to get our views into the media. So we formed a group called Real Women, Real Voices. We all met in New York. We invited every media outlet around to come and talk to us. Nobody showed up. It was a slap in the face. We felt that the series does a great disservice to incarcerated women. All it is is about sex. Yes there’s sex in prison, and contraband. [But] it doesn’t show the heartbreak. The medical conditions that often get ignored. Women getting locked up with horrendous sentences; they can’t have children anymore because their childbearing years are over.

Rawls-Ivy: I watched partway through Season 1. I was in Danbury; I knew the characters. Then I thought, ​“I don’t want to watch this anymore …”

Codianni: It wasn’t how we experienced prison.

But it brought as sense of women’s prison to the masses the way nothing else has. Historically you see these Hollywood kind of prison movies that are just ridiculous and insulting and sexualized.

I find ​“Orange Is The New Black” that way.

Rawls-Ivy: I think there is some truth to that. I think it has also done some good. It allows people to think bout incarcerated women in ways they hadn’t thought of — incarcerated women with lives and stories. I appreciated the way they went back and showed the back story of some of the characters, so you have a sense of where they came from and how they got there.

Codianni: These are real people. They’re played as buffoons in that series. These are committed activists and organizers who are not any way like their shape and form on TV. We know these people. We are these people. I’m just in the book; I’m not in the series. I better not be in the series!

Red Licorice

Codianni:They could show, for instance, how I took the Federal Bureau of Prisons to court for cross-gender pat search. A lot of women in prison were sexually assaulted. When an officer used to come behind me and search me, run his leg up me, hit the crotch, lift up my breast, run his finger over the nipples, I’d freak out. That’s something you don’t see. About how cross-gender pat searches affect women with a history of sexual abuse. It just brings it all back. You’re in a situation where they’re in control over you. Like you’re being raped again. Even if the guards are not technically raping you, you feel that way again. The series should touch on that. It really affects me.

Rawls-Ivy: Take us through a day or a week in prison.

Codianni: You’re told when to get up, when to eat, what to eat, when you can shower, when you can’t shower, what you can buy from commissary if you can afford it. You make 12 cents an hour; toothpaste is $1.50, $2 a tube. You’re given a job. It doesn’t matter what your skills are; you’re put what the institution needs. If you’re there long enough, you can get a job with UniCorr, which pays more, but is still exploitative.
You get visits, which is hard for women with young children.

The atmosphere in the visiting room is so sad most of the time. If you’re a mother you try to make your child feel everything is OK. But when mommy is getting ready to go back to prison, there’s crying, screaming, the women break down, the children are horribly affected.

In a prison camp, there’s no locks on doors . You can just walk off. If you’re community-eligible, that’s a waste of money to keep people locked up. It’s a total waste of taxpayer money.

Rawls-Ivy: My sentence was 30 days. I spent 29 days. I wasn’t there long enough to go through full intake. I didn’t have a job. I didn’t get assigned a room; I was in the big dormitory room with other women who were coming in.

I think the thing I found most stunning in federal prison camp was the inability for a great many women not able to read. I found that quite stunning. I think the first time someone asked me to read a letter that they got from their children, I said, ​“OK, this is one woman.” She asked me to write that child back.

The next day, another woman. And another woman. Another woman.

By the time I left there, I had written and read a bunch of letters.

They found out that I liked red licorice; I’d come back to my bed, and I’d have a bed full of red licorice.

Codianni: That’s contraband. You’re not supposed to accept it. …

Rawls-Ivy: The level of kindness — they wanted to say, ​“Thank you for helping.” These woman have spent a lot of time having people not be nice to them. Here I am trying to do my little time. … I was stunned by the amount of literacy and nothing in place to correct that.

Codianni: In the federal system, you can get your GED. You work on it. The women who teach you are also incarcerated women. They do their best with what little they have. I remember there were times when the classrooms didn’t have enough paper, pencils. They had to shut down the educational center for black mold. It’s heartbreaking; sometimes the women get so frustrated. All their life, school just passed them. Now they’re in prison.

Rawls-Ivy:The other thing the struck me was the amount of women who were illegal immigrants.

Codianni: Yeah. Not so much in the camp, because you can’t have camp status if you’re in this country without papers. But down at the FCI [Federal Correctional Institution], there’s women from all over the world. They had it really tough. Most of them there were bringing drugs into the country as a way of being economically stable. They did it to provide fro their families. Most of them came from poor sections of Colombia, Mexico, Italy, China, everywhere. Africa. There was a whole United Nations there.

We got to know each other’s cultures a little bit. That was the good part of it.

Rawls-Ivy: I try to tell people I was really struck by the generosity and the camaraderie of women. People took very good care of me.

The ​“SHU” &Toilet Paper

Codianni: The sisterhood of women, who go all out to help women. Not always. …People have little fights and arguments. But if there’s a pregnant woman, they’ll risk going to Shoe to take fruit or milk out of the kitchen.

Rawls-Ivy:Tell people what the ​“SHU” is….

Codianni: SHU is a ​“special housing unit.” It was at the FCI. For taking fruit out of the kitchen, to having an argument, to having a same-sex relationship, you go to Shoe. You’re locked in bunk beds. It’s like solitary with a lot of noise. Women would risk that to help women who were pregnant or sick.

I’ve seen them carry women who were sick upstairs. If somebody has a death in the family, when you get a call to come to see the chaplain, the whole camp, the whole lFCI , stops, because you know somebody’s getting bad news.

Rawls-Ivy:Talk to me about toilet paper.

Codianni: The toilet paper and sanitary pads are a problem in prison for women. Because male correctional officers just don’t get it. I don’t want to be gross, but women need sanitary pads. You’re allotted so much. You have to go ask the male officers for sanitary pads, which is embarrassing. And toilet paper. Men don’t understand that women don’t just get off the toilet and walk away. You have to wipe yourself. You have to beg for toilet paper.

Rawls-Ivy: Let’s talk about what happens when you leave prison.

Codianni: In the 15 years I was locked up, I never heard one woman say, ​“I can’t wait to get out and commit a crime and come back.” But that happens. There’s not a lot of support out there.

New Haven’s lucky. We have the Fresh Start program with Clifton Graves, who will go all out to help somebody. A lot of people don’t know about it.

When you get out, there’s no halfway house for women. You need place to stay, first and foremost. A stable, safe place. If you’re trying to get custody of your children, that’s number one. To have a safe, affordable place to live. If you don’t have family, as I did, you can definitely end up back in prison. Nobody hires you first of all. So you can’t afford rent. So often you hook up with somebody from your past, who’s a little shaky. You might sell drugs or end up in the sex trade, and end up back in prison.

Rawls-Ivy: I committed a white-collar crime. I faced the same sort of hardships. Every door close. The good thing is I had a strong foundation. I had a community of folks who were willing to wrap themselves astound me and support my reentry. But I couldn’t find a job. I got divorced. I was in the throes of losing my home and trying to raise young children.

Codianni: It’s very difficult. I wish there was more support for women getting out I wish more businesses would hire them. I wish they would pay them a living wage. It’s extremely, extremely difficult. Between trying to find a job, find a place to live, get custody of your children, provide clothes, food. People stigmatize women who were incarcerated as something lesser than a real woman. They feel the woman got herself in there and should have thought of her kids. They haven’t walked in her shoes. They don’t know the hardship the woman faced.

Doing Time — Outside

Rawls-Ivy: Do you feel like you’re always doing time, even when you’re out?

Codianni: I feel like you’re always doing time people won’t ever let you forget. They won’t let you move forward. But I’m like you. I won’t’ be defined by my crime.

Rawls-Ivy:I know there’s a lot of conversation about banning the box. New Haven [has done it]. Now you’re seeing a national conversation. The president has spoken about it. … What does that mean?

Codianni: When you got to fill out a job application, there’s a little box. Have you ever been incarcerated? Have you every been convicted a crime? If you say yes, it’s in the box usually. Ban the box says that can’t be in the application. That gives you a foot in the door.

But there has to be more of a connection to businesses to hire people. Not just saying they’re going to. New Haven has contracts with tons of businesses. They’re getting the money from the city of New Haven. Let’s have them hire people from New Haven, who have record. Give them a second chance.

There’s also a movement beyond ban the box, and that’s having people be able to expunge their records. So you can honestly answer, ​“No.”

Rawls-Ivy: What kind of supports are there in New Haven for women? If a women is listening to this show today who is newly released from prison, what should she do?

Codianni: I think the smartest thing she should do is go down to Project Fresh Start and talk to Clifton Graves and anybody who works. there. They’ll help her get back in society and show her places where she can live, where she can get food. Education. Help her get into maybe Gateway. It’s a real asset. We have a real gem in new Haven. Women need to take advantage of it. This is not happening in every city.

In 2013, there were a million women who were either in prison, in jail, on parole, or probation. We’re talking about a good segment of the population. 64 percent of the women in prison lived with their children before they were incarcerated. There are alternatives to incarceration that can keep those families intact and help the children avoid the trauma of an incarcerated mother.

One of 56 women in America face the possibility of bringing incarcerated int heir lifetime. For black women, it’s one in nine. Do black women commit the most crimes? No. The system has to change, too. If we’re going to be serious about reform we’re going to have to stop the racial bias against people of color. Locking them up is not the only answer.

Life After Prison

Rawls-Ivy:What is life like for you?

Codianni: I’m just happy to be free. I’m happy to be doing what I’m doing. I’m lucky to be doing it. When I first got out of prison, I went to California with my brother to start a whole new life. I couldn’t get a job. I’m a reasonably intelligent woman. I have a good work ethic.

Plus I missed my kids. I came back. I did the same thing — trying to find a job. Nobody would hire me.

Finally I went to New Haven Reentry Roundtable, which is another great thing. It’s at Church of the Rock. There’s a lot of organizations that are getting money to find jobs for us to help us. I said, ​“Does anybody ever hire somebody with a criminal record?” A woman came out to me who had this idea for a website to put out information about criminal justice reform, what works with reentry and what doesn’t. She gave me as second chance. I’ve been managing editor for five years now.

Rawls-Ivy:It’s great website. I cruise it all the time for content.

Codianni: We have national organizations subscribing. Some prisons. This is my baby, and I built it up.

I’m the mother of two grandchildren now. So my life is going good. I’m not going to let my past define me as who I am now, and where’ I’m going. It’s not going to hold mme back.

Rawls-Ivy: When I was released, I self-exiled for five, six years. I wouldn’t be seen. I wouldn’t be heard. I created a whole online life. I was doing PR.. Then I started working back at the Inner City. [Publisher] John Thomas gave me a job. I blossomed. I stepped back into where I left off my life.

Codianni: Women who are out there who have a criminal justice elite know this: There’s life after prison. But you have to go for it. You get so beaten down. I was so beaten down, Babz, when I tried to get a job/ If I didn’t have a family, I don’t know what I would have done. You have hope when you get out of prison. It gets slowly, slowly picked apart. So it’s important the people know about women like us who go for it.

Rawls-Ivy:It’s challenging. I’m dating, right? You have to sort of share that part. You have to be willing to hear someone’s fear about you being formerly incarcerated.

Codianni:Then you become in some people’s minds damaged goods. You’re better off that they walked away than they they stayed with somebody that ever looked down on you. So many women, they have such low self-esteem. You see that in prison.

Rawls-Ivy: I saw that.

Codianni: They get with a guy. The guys tells them, ​“Oh, I can’t take this charge. You take it.” They take it. They’re in prison. They lose their kids. The guy’s with another woman. I want to talk to young girls and tell them how it really is.

Rawls-Ivy: I was so struck by young women in prison. I was struck y by how young these women were. With children. A lot of drug charges.

Codianni: They’re all ​“conspiracies” in federal. Not that you did it. ​“Conspiracy.” You get crazy time.

Rawls-Ivy: Somebody has to be talking to these young women It is a self-esteem issue. I understand that. Coming from a background of abuse, I know how that can break you if you don’t have people to lift you up and support you. You can easily find yourself ins intuitions with people who mean you no good.

Next Steps

Rawls-Ivy:Tell me what you are hopeful about, in terms of your own self and how we in America can wrestle this tide of mass incarceration.

Codianni: I hope we can get this message across and reach as many people as I can to open their eyes about what mass incarceration is doing to men and especially women and families. I think our family is heading in the right direction. I think women have to become part of this movement. Formerly incarcerated women need to be at the table when policy is being made. You need input from people who were part of it. They have the experience and the knowledge.

Too often you see conferences about mass incarcerations … Not that that professor and legislators are bad people. But you need to have people who experience fit sit down and tell it like it is. Not sugar-coat and not put it in this exclusive language. Keeping it real.

I hope to see Reentry Central built up even more. It’s a subscription website. The money goes for paying my salary, the salary of our webmaster and to help teach other women about journalism and websites, etc. etc. We’re a very small organization. But we’re the mouse that roared. We hope that people subscribe or look at our website.

I won’t die until I get that message out. I’m 67 years old.