Skip to content Skip to search

Republish This Story

* Please read before republishing *

We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free under an Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives Creative Commons license as long as you follow our republishing guidelines, which require that you credit The 19th and retain our pixel. See our full guidelines for more information.

To republish, simply copy the HTML at right, which includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to The 19th. Have questions? Please email [email protected].

— The Editors

Loading...

Modal Gallery

/
Sign up for our newsletter

Menu

  • Our Mission
  • Our Team
  • Latest Stories
  • Search
  • Upcoming Events
  • Contact Us
  • Newsletter
  • Donate
  • Work With Us
  • Fellowships
    • From the Collection

      Changing Child Care

      Illustration of a woman feeding a baby a bottle
      • Washington, D.C., offers financial relief to local child care workers

        Orion Rummler · September 20
      • As climate change worsens hurricane season in Louisiana, doulas are ensuring parents can safely feed their babies

        Jessica Kutz · May 5
      • Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito argued abortion isn’t an economic issue. But is that true?

        Chabeli Carrazana · May 4
    • From the Collection

      Next-Gen GOP

      Illustration of a woman riding an elephant
      • Mayra Flores’ victory set a record for women in Congress. It also reflects the growing visibility of Republican Latinas

        Candice Norwood · June 21
      • A banner year for Republican women

        Amanda Becker · November 11
      • Republican women could double representation in the U.S. House

        Amanda Becker · November 4
    • From the Collection

      On The Rise

      Illustration of three women marching
      • Can Cheri Beasley build a winning coalition in North Carolina?

        Candice Norwood · October 11
      • Los Angeles has never elected a woman mayor. Karen Bass hopes to change that.

        Nadra Nittle · September 8
      • Judge J. Michelle Childs is confirmed to D.C. appeals court

        Candice Norwood · July 20
    • From the Collection

      Pandemic Within a Pandemic

      Illustration of four people marching for Black Lives Matter with coronavirus as the backdrop
      • The 19th Explains: Why the nursing shortage isn’t going away anytime soon

        Mariel Padilla · September 23
      • Some LGBTQ+ people worry that the COVID-19 vaccine will affect HIV medication. It won’t.

        Orion Rummler · November 23
      • Why are more men dying from COVID? It’s a complicated story of nature vs. nurture, researchers say

        Mariel Padilla · September 22
    • From the Collection

      Portraits of a Pandemic

      Illustration of a woman wearing a mask and holding up the coronavirus
      • For family caregivers, COVID is a mental health crisis in the making

        Shefali Luthra · October 8
      • A new database tracks COVID-19’s effects on sex and gender

        Shefali Luthra · September 15
      • Pregnant in a pandemic: The 'perfect storm for a crisis'

        Shefali Luthra · August 25
    • From the Collection

      The 19th Explains

      People walking from many articles to one article where they can get the context they need on an issue.
      • The 19th Explains: What we know about Brittney Griner’s case and what it took to get her home

        Candice Norwood, Katherine Gilyard · December 8
      • The 19th Explains: Why the Respect for Marriage Act doesn’t codify same-sex marriage rights

        Kate Sosin · December 8
      • The 19th Explains: Why baby formula is still hard to find months after the shortage

        Mariel Padilla · December 1
    • From the Collection

      The Electability Myth

      Illustration of three women speaking at podiums
      • Mayra Flores’ victory set a record for women in Congress. It also reflects the growing visibility of Republican Latinas

        Candice Norwood · June 21
      • Stepping in after tragedy: How political wives became widow lawmakers

        Mariel Padilla · May 24
      • Do term limits help women candidates? New York could be a new testing ground

        Barbara Rodriguez · January 11
    • From the Collection

      The Impact of Aging

      A number of older people walking down a path of information.
      • 'I'm planning on working until the day I die': Older women voters are worried about the future

        Mariel Padilla · June 3
      • Climate change is forcing care workers to act as first responders

        Jessica Kutz · May 31
      • Woman alleges that an assisted living facility denied her admission because she is transgender

        Sara Luterman · November 8
    • From the Collection

      Voting Rights

      A series of hands reaching for ballots.
      • Election workers believe in our system — and want everyone else to, too

        Barbara Rodriguez, Jennifer Gerson · November 8
      • Voter ID laws stand between transgender people, women and the ballot box

        Barbara Rodriguez · October 14
      • Emily’s List expands focus on diverse candidates and voting rights ahead of midterm elections

        Errin Haines · August 30

    View all collections

  • Explore by Topic

    • 19th Polling
    • Abortion
    • Business & Economy
    • Caregiving
    • Coronavirus
    • Education
    • Election 2020
    • Election 2022
    • Environment & Climate
    • Health
    • Immigration
    • Inside The 19th
    • Justice
    • LGBTQ+
    • Politics
    • Press Release
    • Race
    • Sports
    • Technology

    View All Topics

Home
  • Our Mission
  • Our Team
  • Latest Stories
  • Search
  • Upcoming Events
  • Contact Us
  • Newsletter
  • Donate
  • Work With Us
  • Fellowships

We’re an independent, nonprofit newsroom reporting on gender, politics and policy. Read our story.

The 19th News(letter)

News from reporters who represent you and your communities.

You have been subscribed!

Submitting...

Uh-oh! Something went wrong. Please try again later.

Become a member

Illustration of inaccessible period products.
Most states still have no legislation or mandates on period products in prisons. (Illustration by Clarice Bajkowski/The 19th)

Health

5 pads for 2 cellmates: Period inequity remains a problem in prisons

Many prisons charge for menstrual products. And access is limited even in facilities where pads and tampons are free.

Jean Lee

Reporting Fellow

Published

2021-06-29 13:21
1:21
June 29, 2021
pm

Share

  • Twitter
  • Facebook
  • Email

Chandra Bozelko kept bleeding, and her options were limited.

It was 2013, and Bozelko was serving a six-and-a-half-year sentence at York Correctional Institution, the only state women’s prison in Connecticut. Her periods continued to get heavier for over a year. But when she sought medical help, the doctors at the prison told her nothing was wrong. The bleeding continued until Bozelko was released in March 2014. She then saw a doctor, who found and removed an ovarian polyp. 

Years later, she still remembers the sense of desperation she felt while incarcerated. Unable to get more than an allotted number of pads, Bozelko began reusing them. The prison’s pads were thin, she said, thinner than the pads typically sold outside, and the adhesive barely stuck to her clothes. She once saw another woman’s pad fall to the ground because the glue was so weak, so Bozelko stepped on it, hiding the pad beneath her boot to save her from humiliation. She and her cellmate received five of these pads to share among themselves every week, and asking a guard for another pad often led to a rejected request and ridicule. 

The 19th thanks our sponsors. Become one.

Commissary sold a pack of pads for $2.63, Bozelko said, but with prison jobs paying as low as 30 cents an hour in Connecticut, according to a 2017 Policy Initiative study, most people could not afford it on top of other necessities like doctor’s visits, acetaminophen or a phone call to a loved one. As a result, some people fashioned other fabric — towels or cloth ripped from whatever they had — into makeshift pads and were subsequently penalized for destroying public property. Others just bled through their clothes, sitting in their damp, stained garments until the weekly laundry day. (York Correctional Facility declined to comment.)

“It reinforces any kind of powerlessness you have ever felt in your life,” Bozelko said. 

Bozelko’s experience is not unique. According to Corene Kendrick, ACLU National Prison Project’s deputy director, the lack of access to period products in prison facilities is widespread, and many incarcerated people are forced to beg guards for the menstrual hygiene products they need.

Stories by experienced reporters you can trust and relate to.

Delivered directly to your inbox every weekday.

You have been subscribed!

Submitting…

Uh-oh! Something went wrong. Please try again later.

“It is just the height of shaming and dehumanizing and getting rid of any basic modicum of dignity to compound the trauma that people are experiencing when they’re incarcerated,”  Kendrick said.

The 19th thanks our sponsors. Become one.

In 2017, then-Sen. Kamala Harris and her colleagues Sens. Cory Booker, Elizabeth Warren and Richard Durbin introduced a bill to provide free menstrual products to incarcerated people in federal women’s prisons. The Federal Bureau of Prisons issued a guidance memo, separate from Harris’ bill, mandating that menstrual products be available to all incarcerated people in federal correctional facilities at no cost shortly after. In 2018, Congress passed the First Step Act, a more general justice reform effort that included access to menstrual products. 

Most states, however, still have no legislation or mandates on period products in state prisons like the one Bozelko was in. Only 12 states and the District of Columbia have passed menstrual equity laws that require no cost menstrual products in state correctional facilities, which means most incarcerated people in the United States still have limited access to the period products they need. And even in the states with menstrual equity laws, implementation might be a challenge. 

Kimberly Haven, director of the nonprofit Reproductive Justice Inside, who was also formerly incarcerated, said she submitted a Public Information Act request to find out how different jurisdictions in Maryland are implementing the state bill HB797,which requires no cost menstrual hygiene products in correctional facilities at “certain times.” She helped lead the effort toward legislation for this bill. Robert L. Green, Maryland’s Public Safety and Correctional Services Secretary, visited Maryland’s women’s prison in June 2019 and confirmed with The Washington Post that the prison was not consistently following the policy.

“We can’t fight what we can’t see, and we can’t see what they won’t show us,” Haven said.

While legislation often focuses on providing no-cost menstrual products in correctional facilities, Haven said that cost isn’t the only issue. For instance, the First Step Act of 2018 simply requires the Bureau of Prisons “to provide tampons and sanitary napkins that meet industry standards to prisoners for free and in a quantity that meets the healthcare needs of each prisoner.” Jennifer Weiss-Wolf, vice president for development at the Brennan Center for Justice and founder of Period Equity, said that this wording left too few parameters on distribution and that more narrowly crafted laws have led to better results.

  • Read Next:
    A row of tampons with $100 bills on them.
  • Read Next: ‘It cannot be this way’: What is period poverty and how to solve it

Amy Fettig, executive director of The Sentencing Project, a nonprofit group dedicated to shortening prison sentences, said ideally access would be much broader. “What advocates have said is that the pads and tampons should be available in common spaces and restrooms and bathrooms, so that women don’t have to ask anyone, especially officers, for these products,” she said.

Bozelko said that the power dynamic between guards and incarcerated people introduced an element of humiliation whenever someone asked for a menstrual product. Requesting them could also be dangerous: According to a 2019 Period Equity and ACLU report, a Department of Justice investigation found that correctional officers at Tutwiler Prison for Women in Alabama coerced incarcerated people to have sex with them in exchange for access to period products.  

The shame of not having enough access can have ripple effects. “I know women who would turn down visits with their family, who would turn down visits with their attorneys, the very people that are trying to get them out of jail and prison,” Haven said. 

While these laws “maybe don’t make a dent” for incarcerated people right now, Weiss-Wolf said, it’s still crucial to push for and pass bills for menstrual equity in prisons because it creates a foundation for the future. Facilities are now held responsible by the law. 

“The idea of pushing for these bills is partly to educate the public and partly to create a new baseline,” Weiss-Wolf said. “Even knowing it’s going to be very challenging to implement fairly and well, you do have the benefit of the baseline, which is that it is now the law.” 

A November 2020 report from The Sentencing Project showed that “the rate of growth for female imprisonment has been twice as high as that of men since 1980. ”Despite this increase, prisons were “literally built for men,” said Pamela Winn, which resulted in a lack of legislation around problems that affect people with periods. She said she hopes more states will pass legislation in the next few years.

The Menstrual Equity for All Act, introduced by Rep. Grace Meng, is a federal bill that would tie a state’s federal funding to a mandate to provide period products to every correctional facility, working toward more widespread period equity in prisons throughout the nation. 

“Although we have made progress in combating period poverty, much more work needs to be done so that nobody ever faces challenges with affording and accessing these vital products,” Meng said in a press release.

Period Equity’s state legislation tracker currently shows that 18 states have introduced menstrual equity bills, which sometimes include incarcerated people. Weiss-Wolf said the growing spotlight on both incarceration and period poverty, “a new willingness to do on all sides,” meant the fight for further changes would continue.

“There’s been a vibrant criminal justice movement focused on the conditions and experiences of incarcerated women,” she said. “And the fact that there’s also been a vibrant movement focused on menstruation, the overlap and overlay of those two movements has been really powerful.”

Share

  • Twitter
  • Facebook
  • Email

Help sustain what we started

Your monthly investment is critical to our sustainability as a nonprofit newsroom.

Donate Today

Become a member

Up Next

#FreeBritney activists protest outside the courthouse in Los Angeles.

Health

Britney Spears lost her reproductive freedom. Tragically, her case is not unique.

From the founding of this nation through the modern day, women and members of marginalized communities have faced forced sterilization and other reproductive coercion.

Read the Story

The 19th
The 19th is a 501(c)(3) tax-exempt organization. Our stories are free to republish in accordance with these guidelines.

  • Donate
  • Newsletter
  • Events
  • Search
  • Jobs
  • Fellowships
  • Contact Us
  • About Us
  • Community Guidelines
  • Membership
  • Membership FAQ
  • Major Gifts
  • Sponsorship
  • Privacy
  • Twitter
  • Facebook
  • Instagram