‘Orange is the New Black’ Triggers Jailhouse Fashion Change

When orange became the new black, it didn’t sit well with one Michigan county sheriff.

Saginaw County Sheriff William Federspiel Jail ditched the orange jail-issue jumpsuits, claiming the change back to black-and-white stripes is in the interests of public safety.

He told the MLive/The Saginaw News that orange has become cool due to the Netflix drama, “Orange is the New Black,” in which the protagonist spends a year inside a fictional women’s federal prison for a drug crime.

As a result, “some people think it’s cool to look like an inmate of the Saginaw County Jail wearing all-orange jumpsuits out at the mall or in public,” he said. “It’s a concern, because we do have our inmates out sometimes doing work in the public, and I don’t want anyone to confuse them or have them walk away.”

So it’s back to the iconic jailhouse black-and-white horizontal stripes, which Federspiel doesn’t think anyone will want to adopt to make a pop culture fashion statement.

"When the lines get blurred between the culture outside the jail and the culture within the jail I have to do something to redefine those boundaries, because they've been blurred far too often in public culture,” he said.

Jails began making the switch to other colors the early 20th century because they wanted to shed the 19th century association the black-and-white stripes had with chain gangs, Slate reports.

The state of New York abolished black and white stripes in 1904 because they were looked upon as a badge of shame and were a constant humiliation and irritant to many prisoners,” the (Hudson, NY) Register Star reports.

The newspaper said in 2010 that  jails in that area began switching back from orange to black-and-white to distinguish prisoners from public workers, utility crews and emergency workers who increasingly began wearing uniforms of the same color.

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In the 1970s, orange jumpsuits became more ubiquitous, showing up in perp walks and transfers.

“Sheriffs sometimes put prisoners in orange during perp walks in front of reporters, and prisoners often wear orange in court. Movies such as Con Air – in which a group of convicts clad in orange hijacks a plane – have also helped spread the impression that orange is the new black-and-white,” Slate wrote in December 2010. “And then there's Gitmo. Pictures of Guantanamo Bay prisoners wearing orange have gotten a lot of attention in recent years, although government officials say that most prisoners there wear white.”

But that was yesterday, before “Orange is the New Black” made black-and-white stripes the new orange at the Saginaw County Jail.

Federspiel is paying for the new uniforms, which cost $11.73 a pop, from his budget. That’s the same price charged for the orange, he said, adding the color change should be complete by the end of the year

“I don’t want them to not be easy to spot,” the sheriff said."That's scary. With the amount of people – it's not all across the country, but it's here in Saginaw. I see a lot of people wearing all orange, and they think it's cool. And some people even put 'Property of the Saginaw County Jail' on the back of it. I've seen that. It's like, 'What are you doing? Really?' "

Inmates haven’t liked the change and “they’ve been very verbal,” he said, pointing out that he’s not trying to shame or embarrass them.

“... My response is, ‘Too bad. Dont’ come to jail.’ ”

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