Shawshank is also one of the only movies in the history of film that was better than the book it was based upon (A Stephen King short-story called "Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redemption").

4. "The Pillow We Get Is Thin Like Paper"

Maria Ruiz (Jessica Pimentel) tells Healy (Michael Harney, at the first meeting of the Women's Advisory Council) that the pillows are too thin.

This is 100% true.

It never occurred to me, in all of my pre-jail and pre-prison preparation to think that I would be without a pillow. After spending my entire life with a pillow, I will freely admit that I took pillows for granted.

In jail, we had no pillows. The trick you learned was to roll the cushion on your bed up so that it functioned almost like a pillow.

In prison, you do have pillows but they are tiny and are actually "thin like paper." You are, however, given traditional pillow cases for those tiny pillows and most inmates just roll extra things up with the "pillow" inside of the pillow case in order to give the pillow more heft.

In the summer I would surround my pillow with my prison coat and cover it with the pillow case. Ended up being pretty comfy. I kind of doubt anyone would throw too much of a fit over the pillows because everyone figures out how to make them work.

Could be a guy-girl thing, so I totally could be wrong.

Many people had an extra pillow, but sometimes CO's would consider extra pillows to be contraband.

3. No One Here Gives a Crap About The Long-Term Chapman

Counselor Healy says this to Chapman after she suggests that opening the yard will decrease the long-term health care costs of Litchfield Correctional.

Piper is obviously right but what Healy says about DOC economics is also 100% true.

Prison administrations and State Governments always seem to favor short-term cuts over long-term savings (usually in very counterproductive ways).

Programming is a great example. In Michigan, there are unwritten but parole board enforced programming requirements for inmates. When people don't have the programming, they do not get paroled. Virtually every inmate who gets the programming gets released after their first parole opportunity.

Programs are generally broken up into 15 inmate groups. So, for the cost of one therapist or counselor, you can expedite the parole of 15 people at a savings of 37k per inmate per year.

But guess what the first thing that gets cut every year but rarely gets expanded might be? Yup, you guessed it, programming. So, if you do the math, by cutting the cost of one counselor for one group (maybe 10k in cost) the state costs itself $555,000.00 a year.

Now that is some idiotic short-term thinking.