All images courtesy Netflix

?You can read it in the paper, but to see it dramatized, it makes it more real and relatable to people? One of the first things that production designer Malchus Janocko noticed was the cheap materials. When he was working with his crew to design ICE detention facilities for the latest and final season of Netflix?s Orange Is the New Black (OITNB), which came out July 26, he was a bit shocked at just how flimsy and inexpensive these places were. Put up a box in a week, a metal shed on a concrete pad, then add some reinforced fiberglass, plumbing, maybe air conditioning, and you have a facility.
?The permanent prisons are expensive, they?re meant to last forever and are indestructible,? Janocko says. ?These ICE facilities, you can put them up in a couple of days. It?s a whole new experience for how we build and design scenery.? The climax of Netflix?s critically acclaimed prison drama, which includes multiple storylines that center around immigration enforcement and detention centers, was in one way a departure for the show. For many seasons, the show has been set in the fictional Litchfield correctional facility, then briefly a maximum security prison. Janocko, who began working for the show in Season 4, says that accuracy has always been a hallmark of the series. The maximum security cell from Season 6, known in the show as an Administrative Segregation Unit, was built after extensive facility tours and interviews with guards and staff.
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