Orange is the New Black by Piper Kerman

Orange is the New Black by Piper Kerman, 298 pages, nonfiction, memoir.
The first book of nonfiction I had read in over a month, Kerman's recounting of her time in federal prison is a rather quiet, contemplative read in which she cops to her minor crimes, celebrates her friends and family on the outside, as well as the women she meets in Danbury, and rails against our criminal justice system. She's serving a 15 month sentence for conspiracy, not because of what she actually did, but because the risks involved in going to trial are too great. Her account of the Danbury prison in Connecticut is well written and interesting. There is nothing being done to prepare the inmates for release and life outside the prison, but it is not a horrible place, not brutal, just mean, petty and unnecessary for most of the women. The federal prison in Chicago, where she spends the last few months of her sentence, (where she is sent to testify against a man she never met, and of whom she has no knowledge), is a different sort of place, here there is nothing for the prisoners to do and little in the way of either supervision or supplies. Many of the inmates here seem to be medicated into a stupor. The waste of human lives and taxpayer money are painfully apparent here. Her arguments are not new, but she does have a fresh perspective.