According to the most recent figures from the Bureau of Justice Statistics, [there are] 2.2 million people behind bars in the United States (Blake, 2016). This represents a growing number of inmates and overpopulated prisons. However, the focus is on the administrative functionality of the criminal justice system and the nature of the treatment inmates are subjected to by authorities in prison. We are quickly introduced to a stereotype about prison officers when Chapman first enters the reception area of Litchfield Penitentiary. The receiving officer is unaccommodating of just about everything. The officer who is supposed to escort her in is brought across as rude and condescending towards inmates. When her picture is taken for identification purposes, George ‘Pornstache’ Mendez is openly rude. When Chapman tells him she wasn’t ready for the picture when he took it, he says, “Tough shit” and calls in the next inmate. Interestingly, he later turns out to be a sexual predator. The stereotype here is that prison guards are mostly mean mannered, as indicated with the tally of all but John Bennett. The actual officers who guard prison facilities may not take too kindly to this representation, although its truthfulness is a matter of circumstance and …show more content…
Most often, films and TV shows are so focused on the male side when it comes to the criminal justice system that we forget women are also imprisoned. The TV show focuses on the issues affecting women, including racial bias, sexuality and sanitary issues among others. As a whole, however, the idea f gender is best portrayed through Sophia Burset, who is a transgender woman trying to cope with prison life. She finds it difficult to keep up with her required medications in order not to revert back to a male-looking body as getting this medication into the prison proves a hard task. As if that’s not enough, Sophia faces a certain amount of stigmatization and less-than-impressive treatment from the other people in Litchfield, especially George ‘Pornstache’ Mendez. Sophia goes to the point of asking her wife to smuggle in hormones for her. He promises to get his life together. His wife, declining the idea, says, “Do your time. Get the fuck out of here so you can be a father t your son. Man up.” Despite all her hardships, she declines to give into George ‘Pornstache’ Mendez’s advances in exchange for her needed hormones. Later in the story, she is put in solitary confinement by the prison’s authority to supposedly protect her from the other inmates, where she “struggles to maintain her sanity” (Blake, 2016). Sophia’s story line echoes the real-life case of Ashley Diamond, a transgender woman who spent 30 days in