As part of Dr. Vishniac’s doctoral research, she conducted 14 interviews with 15 individuals. Nine of these individuals were previously incarcerated women who had experienced a period in jail and/or prison. These women had been incarcerated from days to decades in facilities across the United States and it had been varying lengths of time since their release. Below is a summary of one of these interviews, shared with the consent of the interviewee. This interview was conducted on July 6th, 2021. *Note, this interview includes strong language.*
Morgan Godvin is the Project Director of Drug Checking Los Angeles, a community-based harm reduction project at the University of California Los Angels. She previously served on Oregon government commissions overseeing drug policy and substance use funding.
How did you learn how you would get menstrual products?
I didn’t menstruate for many years, which is a common side effect of heroin. When I got to jail, I knew that my period would resume, and I was very concerned about it. When I was originally arrested, I was in jail for two years awaiting federal sentencing, which is slow. I was at the county jail for a year and then a different jail for a year. They didn’t have tampons, they only had pads. You find out about the pads your first day, even though you’re not menstruating, because you use the pads for other things like cleaning and making ear plugs out of the cotton filling. So I knew there were pads. I still don’t think that I understood how bad it was going to be just with pads until my period resumed weeks or months later…So the pads were unlimited. They didn’t do that thing where they only give you a certain amount per week. There was just a giant box and you could take as many as you wanted, hence the cleaning and the ear plugs. But that was so insufficient because, when you’re wearing a pad, it’s hard to sleep in that. They weren’t made for overnight. They were just these very cheap, very basic pads. So we would bleed through them, especially at night, and we didn’t have a change of clothes. The officers wouldn’t care and they would make you sit around in bloody pants, and male officers would tell you:
You should have been more careful. I can’t just get you a change of laundry every day. This isn’t a fashion competition. This is a jail.
And that was the first time where I really remember, not even identifying as a feminist, but recognizing there was something very fucking wrong with the dynamic of male officers telling me I should have been more careful while I slept not to bleed through a four-inch pad. And why are there not tampons? And they would cite health concerns. And I’m like, we’ve all been using tampons our entire life, do not tell me, ‘Oh, but toxic shock syndrome.’ No, that’s bullshit. That’s bullshit, that’s bullshit, that’s bullshit. And now I’m bleeding through my pants and you don’t care, and you’re literally making me sit around in my own blood for eight hours and walking around like that in an open dorm setting with no privacy.
How did you get menstrual products in prison?
Prison was better [than jail] for me but more unequal for wealth inequality. I had my money on my books so I was able to buy tampons on commissary – a $6 box of Tampax. Pads were issued to us seven per week, every week, so we would save them up. I always had tampons in prison, except for one time I’ll get into, and everyone just saved up their pads. Most people used tampons and again saved up the seven weekly pads for cleaning tasks, mostly.
I was at federal prison and they always had logistics issues, supply issues. They would just randomly run out of toilet paper. They couldn’t order things on a proper schedule and were always unexpectedly running out of things that they were supposed to be providing to us on a weekly basis. When you think you’re getting seven [pads] a week every week and you do for the previous six months and then suddenly one week you just don’t get it, or you just don’t get toilet paper that week, you’re not prepared for that. You don’t have a backstop. You weren’t thinking. That happened once for multiple consecutive weeks with the pads, and because the supply of pads was reduced the demand for tampons was increased at commissary. People who would normally spend that $6 on a phone call home or on food suddenly transitioned to buying tampons out of necessity, because the prison wasn’t issuing pads. And then commissary ran out of tampons, and so we were out of pads and tampons simultaneously for about two weeks. And a male guard told us to plug up with toilet paper, at which point I lost my shit and went full Karen white girl on it and contacted all my senators and had my family calling prison reform organizations and emailing and it laid external pressure down on the prison and they went to the store, or whatever the fuck they did, and bought pads and tampons and restocked after that.
But after that I was deemed a political agitator and all of my communications were monitored by the special investigative services at the prison and I was threatened with going to the hole for my political activities. Mind you, my political activity was that menstrual products are a human right. That was all I was advocating for.
They carried the tampons in the commissary but they didn’t give tampons out?
That’s correct. That changed before I left. After the menstrual product shortage incident, sometime after that, I think it was Congress, or maybe just internal BOP policy, but towards the end of 2017 for the first time in history they began dispensing tampons for free on a monthly basis. I witnessed that. That was just shortly after the guards had been telling us to plug up with toilet paper, so it’s very discordant.
Why do you think they won’t provide tampons?
It’s just cost. There was a female sergeant who said that to us, who’d been there for 25 years, and I think she was just trying to make up a justification that made sense knowing that it didn’t make sense. They didn’t write that in policy anywhere. ‘Oh we’re concerned about toxic shock syndrome so we’re not going to give tampons.’ No. They just bought whatever was cheaper.
How did you find out about getting menstrual products in prison?
From the other inmates. It was the unit orderlies’ task to pass those out weekly. Ninety-eight percent of prison rules and daily operations is not written anywhere. You have to learn it from people around you. You learn it the hard way, really. That was one of many things that you just learn. They would pass it out with the toilet paper. I don’t even remember learning that. It’s just one of those things that you’re told when you get there from your cellmates or the orderlies or what have you.
For whatever reason, the jail offered both pads and tampons on an unlimited basis, for free, available in a box in the dorm. Because they were always there and they never ran out, we didn’t hoard it. There wasn’t that compulsive need to hoard cause you don’t know when it’s running out, there wasn’t that scarcity mindset, and so they were just there and everything was fine and no one died of toxic shock. Now their revenue was probably a little bit higher because such a high percentage of their detainees were on a federal contract between ICE and the Marshalls…Honestly, that was a good jail, out of all the jails I could have been at. It was boring, there was no programming. In that way it was terrible. There’s no stimulation. But all the deputies treated me with respect, I was never degraded, and they gave us tampons. As far as a jail goes, that’s about as good as it gets.
I ended up getting on Depo-Provera in jail because I was having severe periods as I had just started menstruating for the first time in five years. When I was transferred to another county, I was due for another Depo shot. Obviously, I’m not using it for birth control. I’m not having heterosexual sex in the jail. They refused because in that county, a small rural jail, the medical provider was private, it was a contract, and they would just cost cut any possible thing and they didn’t want to give Depo. They didn’t want to incur the expense, so they said:
You’ll have to bleed and save all your dirty tampons and pads in a black trash bag and then we’ll weigh them to see how many grams of fluid you’re bleeding and if it’s over some metric then we’ll give you Depo.
Which was weird. And disgusting. I didn’t do that, because who’s going to stick their dirty tampons in a trash bag and save them at your bunk for three days in an open dorm setting? That’s wildly nasty. No one did that, so their tactic worked. It was a deterrent to ever having to give anyone Depo by making the process to get it so onerous that no one would go through with it. That was the private medical contractor at the jail, not the jail itself. The jail itself was always really respectful, including with periods. Except how when you got strip searched, which you did every single day if you worked at laundry, you would have to pull out your tampon in front of the female officer. Now they’re saying you could have contraband up there with it, and I’m like, this doesn’t even make sense. All the inmates, we just realized if you tuck your tampon string and they don’t see you have it in, they don’t make you pull it out, which is degrading. We would just tuck the string instead of pulling it out during strip searches, after visitation or after work shifts.
Were the supplies you had sufficient to fulfill their intended function?
Yea, they were lower quality than anything that I could buy in a store today. Maybe at the Dollar Tree or something. You know I don’t know where they were getting that shit but it was horrible. Actually, I saw it recently. Where was I? I was at a stadium or something. I walked in and I just saw that same brand of pad that I had never seen before in my life. They were being provided at some institution. I was at an airport or a university, and I realize that those are very different things, but I just remember walking into the women’s bathroom and seeing that brand of pad that I hadn’t seen since jail and thinking, ‘Where the hell do they get these really cheap, terrible pads?’ But also, hey, that’s cool, they’re providing free pads in a public bathroom. I was with someone too, and I said, “Oh my God, these are the ones from jail.” And my friend said, “What are you talking about?”
Could you ask for more products if you needed them?
No. There’s no need with communal sharing. Some women have had hysterectomies and don’t bleed at all. There’s plenty of older women, especially. We had lifers there. People who don’t menstruate at all were also getting pads. Most cells had a large backstock, because each cell was built for one person and housed three, so each week the cell would get 21 pads, and you’d just stick them on the back of the toilet where there’s a little shelf.
Every cell did that, so there wasn’t as much need because of this communal sharing. We had no storage space. You couldn’t stockpile more than that little shelf would hold because our cells were so overcrowded. There was a need to use them as fast as we were being given them, whether for cleaning or whether giving them to someone who’s a particularly heavy bleeder, or is having IUD or menstruation problems and is bleeding constantly. We just took care of each other in that way. But the orderlies had access to the pads, so I guess if you were really hard up you could probably ask one of the orderlies to get it for you out of the closet. Because the guards don’t do anything. We run the prison ourselves and there’s a hierarchy of power among the inmates with their prison jobs. I’m sure if you just asked the right person, you could probably get access to pads. I seriously doubt the guards are keeping them under lock and key, even though I’m sure they’re supposed to be.
Do you think access to menstrual products impacts success after release?
Eighty to ninety percent of women in jail and prison are survivors of sexual trauma, usually repeatedly, throughout their life course. These patterns of degradation and shame are very familiar to them. They often have deep self-esteem and self-worth issues. I’ve never seen so many women with cut scars up and down their arms as I did in prison. The prison repeating patterns of power and abuse by having male guards make you sit in your blood or dole out your tampons or pads to you, the subtle effect that that has on one’s psyche cannot be understated. Women have an inherently lower criminality than men. What pushes them to end up in prison is very different than most men. The root of it is often poverty and trauma, and then how that has affected their coping abilities. We send them to prison and instead of making them better we just continue the exact same traumatic dynamic that they’ve lived with their entire life, replicate these same shame patterns. ‘You should have been more careful! Why did you bleed into your pants?’ says the male officer to the woman.
We have an opportunity. We have literally a captive audience. We could build people up, teach them healthier coping mechanisms, try to improve their self-esteem and self-worth so that they do not return to substance use or crime. Instead, we degrade them in the name of punishment, as if punishment and justice were synonyms.