A new regime has arrived at Litchfield and with it comes new business interests, spiritual movements, and parental problems that turn life behind bars upside down and ignite power struggles among Litchfield's residents and guards.

Brooklynite Piper Chapman, whose wild past comes back to haunt her and results in her arrest and detention in a federal penitentiary. To pay her debt to society, Piper trades her comfortable New York life for an orange prison jumpsuit and finds unexpected conflict and camaraderie amidst an eccentric group of inmates.