"Orange" Isn't The New Black | New Haven Independent:
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.
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