How Prisons Use Menstruation as a Form of Punishment

Menstruation doesn’t stop because someone is incarcerated. However, being incarcerated can affect our rights to menstruate with dignity and our access to menstrual products and sanitary conditions.

In this article, criminal-justice reporter Victoria Law and oral historian Racheal Kauder Nalebluff highlight what they found while completing a global oral history project on menstruating while incarcerated. They found that prisons weaponize menstruation.

Prisons weaponize menstruation in several ways. They may provide an insufficient number of menstrual products. Menstruating people who are incarcerated may not be able to afford more, and may have to use toilet paper as a substitute. During strip searches, women may be asked to remove tampons or pads, leaving them to bleed on the floor. Incarcerated menstruators may be given menstrual products but no underwear or no trash cans to dispose of those products. Additionally, they can face verbal harassment and stigma.

We need legislation that ensures that women and gender-expansive people who are incarcerated can bleed with dignity. While federal prisons provide menstrual products free of charge, this doesn’t affect most menstruators who are incarcerated in state prisons. There must be state laws that ensure that women and gender-expansive people have access to menstrual products, sanitary conditions, and privacy that will allow them to menstruate with dignity.

We’re assigned one pack of pads and five regular-size tampons monthly. If you’re one of the heavy bleeders, women who have fibroids or are premenopausal, the state will not provide you any extra items. You must purchase them. We aren’t paid to work in Texas. And nothing is free in prison.

SOURCE: Time Magazine • AUTHOR: Victoria Law and Rachel Kauder Nalebuff • LAST UPDATED: March 29, 2023