It is also important to remember that because our country's most recent wave of mass incarceration started in the 80's with the war on crack cocaine (found mostly in inner-cities as opposed to cocaine found mostly in suburbs) that black and brown people vastly outnumber whites in prison (which makes segregation difficult if not impossible).

Hopefully, someone reading this who has done Federal time can clarify if racial segregation happens in Federal prisons.

4. Prison Cutbacks

Much of the drama in S1 E3 is generated from prison cutbacks that close down both the exercise yard (correctional officer cutbacks) and cause the dispensary to move to generic medicines (which results in Sophia's hormone dosages being reduced).

After Sofia takes drastic measures to get sent to medical to get new hormones (she swallows the head of one of Healy's bobbleheads), she finds herself in an even worse position after the unsympathetic doctor decides to suspend her hormones entirely (to investigate possible liver damage).

Michigan state prisons were undergoing extensive cutbacks throughout my entire period of incarceration. Everything from food services to medical care was "streamlined" while I was inside (they even experimented with privatization). However, they never closed exercise yards, and I suspect that they never would.

The most effective anti-violence instruments in prison IMHO are:

* Personal Televisions

* Video Cameras

* The Exercise Yard

Violence absolutely happens on the exercise yard (or yard), but the violence on the yard is nothing compared to what would happen if you tried to bottle up an entire prison inside the units for the vast majority of time every day.

Prisons are, in general, overcrowded and exercise yards are the primary safety-valve.

It is very unlikely the yard would be closed, even as a cost-cutting measure. It is somewhat unclear if the entire yard was shut down or just the "track" area. I guess that it is theoretically possible only one area of the yard (the track) was shut down but, the most important part of the yard is the exercise areas.

It still seems to me unlikely that the exercise areas would (or should) be closed.

3. "Strip-searched on the way out"

One of the great mysteries of life, apparently, is how contraband (like drugs and cell phones) get into prisons.

If you ask Departments of Corrections (DOC) they will insist that the majority of contraband comes from people visiting their prisoners. If you ask prisoners, we are pretty sure most of the contraband comes in with guards.

OITNB is kind of agnostic on how contraband reaches prisons. In this episode, they have Piper explain that prisoners get strip-searched on the way out of the visiting room (this is 100% true - full nude, bend over and spread, and open your mouth). At the same time, they have Sophia ask her wife to bring hormone pills during visits for her (it is difficult to manage hand-offs and beat the strip-searches, but I am sure that some people do it).

The show doesn't stop there, however, it also presents Red (Kate Mulgrew) and Officer Mendez (Pablo Schrieber) as regular alternative vectors for contraband.

My personal opinion, because of the intense searches before and after visitation, the majority of contraband most likely comes from the guards.

Prisoners certainly work in collusion with particular guards too, some people certainly get things through during the visitation process (but it is very complicated and difficult), and often guards have relationships with people out in the community that creates opportunities for collusion (including gangs).

This doesn't mean that prisoners aren't capable of thinking of crafty ways to get contraband through the visitation process but, if you think about it, the amount of contraband that prisoners could get through compared to the amount of contraband that exists inside prison doesn't add up.

On my very first day in prison after I left Quarantine, as I was getting orientated, I walked by one of the guards playing poker, with stakes, with inmates.

In other words, one of the very first Correctional Officers I ever saw was gambling with inmates for contraband (in this case, the stakes were cigarettes, which were not allowed in prison). I cannot count the times I saw things like that.

But it certainly wasn't just cigarettes getting through.

2. "Liver-Damage"

I never met any Trans people in prison but I can only imagine how hard prison must be for people with real medical needs.

You have to respect Sophia's commitment to being a woman. Yes, she made some terrible decisions (as did I) but you cannot question her commitment to being a woman. It is hard to even imagine just the pain from the surgeries that she had to endure to make her transition.

There is also a scene where Assistant Warden Natalie Figueroa (Alysia Rainer) asks "why would anyone ever give up being a man." "It's like winning the lottery and giving the ticket back."

Just wanted to mention that because that kind of feeling (which is expressed by Red later) is, from what I understand from my Trans friends, is pretty common and considered extremely insulting (in other words, OITNB does a really good job exposing prejudice).

Anyway, medical care, at least in Michigan prisons, is awful.

In quarantine, I was basically molested by the Doctor doing the intake physical and the rest of my experience with medical care in prison was not much better.

You will rarely if ever, meet a doctor in a Michigan prison. The clinics are supervised by a Doctor but the Doctor is rarely in. At one point, I got MRSA (a huge problem in prisons) and even then, I never saw a Doctor.

When I was having blood pressure problems, never saw a doctor.

Registered nurses do all the work in prisons until something is registered as an "Emergency."

When I say that I never saw a Doctor, I mean literally that I rarely, if ever, even saw a Doctor in the medical clinic in the prison.

When I had MRSA they didn't even quarantine me, I was kept in my cube throughout the whole experience. I had to walk from my bed across the yard and get my medicine from the dispensary several times a day then walk back to my bed.

When I had MRSA I ate, with everyone else, in the cafeteria.

We did have to put all of my clothing and bedding in biohazard bags and turn them in after I recovered.

Everyone in my cube and I did have to scrub every inch of our cube with industrial cleaners after I recovered.

And I only had MRSA, there were people suffering from all kinds of terrible maladies and injuries in prison. The only exception to medical care being terrible was when someone had an emergency.

I had a friend who had a serious eye injury and he was taken to a specialist and ultimately had surgery from University of Michigan eye surgeons.

As OITNB suggests, Prison medicine is run entirely by balancing costs and the risk of lawsuits. If the risk of a lawsuit is high, you get good care and in all other cases, you get terrible care.

Some of you might be thinking that prisoners deserve what they get, however, prison is awful with or without great medical care. Just feeling the doors lock behind you and knowing you can't leave is pretty awful. My judge never sentenced me to terrible medical care.

1. "Lesbian Request Denied"

Yes, many of the counselors are total idiots like Healy (Michael Harney).

My last ARUS (Michigan for counselor) sent me to the wrong County upon release despite multiple conversations both about where I had an apartment set up and where I had lived prior to prison (he sent me to Macomb instead of Washtenaw County - I had literally never physically ever been to Macomb County except for sentencing and jail).

Healy is one of those guys who thinks he cares about helping other people, but really just wants to impose his world view on people by picking winners and losers. He sees his attempts to reward the women he thinks are okay at the expense of the ones he doesn't approve of and considers it mercy

Healy, as we find out throughout the season, deep-down hates women. He translates every gendered response that he can't understand (or accept) into a judgment on appropriate sexuality.

If someone defies him, for instance, it must be because they are lesbians (not real women). At one point, he even suggests that butch lesbians should be rounded up and placed in a seperate wing so that they don't contaminate the real women.

And yes, I met CO's just like Mendez too.

There are great CO"s, terrible CO's, and criminal CO's (I will talk much more about this in future episodes).