Most of the 170,000 people incarcerated at women’s prisons and jails have monthly periods. It’s a fact of life. But the criminal legal system uses menstruation as an opportunity to shame and punish.
When pads and tampons aren’t free, you can be forced to fight over a rationed supply. Purchasing them yourself means working an exploitative job for pennies an hour. If you create makeshift ones from ripped bedsheets, toxic shock syndrome or infection can be a hazard.
And if you can access period products after all this, guards often contaminate them when searching them as “contraband.”
Guards also subject incarcerated people to humiliating, messy strip searches. Other staff demand “sexual favors” in exchange for products.
And the criminalization of menstruation starts outside prison, too.
Black women disproportionately experience period poverty, lacking menstrual products and education. And when people are incarcerated after being pushed to steal period products, this cycle of harm only continues.
For centuries, shame, harmful misinformation, and denied access to healthcare has affected billions of people who menstruate. It may be the logic of capitalism and carcerality, but it isn’t the truth.
From supporting organizations and legal efforts providing free hygiene products, to dismantling prisons and uplifting innovation in menstrual health, let’s create a future where periods are just periods – not punishment.