My Experience of a Period in Prison, Part 1 – Jennifer Toon

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 January 31^st, 2022. This interview transcript has been broken into two parts due to length and has been edited for flow. *Note, this interview includes strong language.*

Jennifer Toon is a co-founder and the Executive Director of Lioness Justice Impacted Women’s Alliance. Her involvement with the criminal legal system began at age 15, when she was adjudicated under Texas determinate sentencing laws, leading to 27 years of system involvement. As Executive Director, Jennifer draws on her lived experience to elevate the voices of system impacted individuals, with a focus on LGBTQIA+ people, youth, and people with disabilities. She lives in Austin, Texas with her cat Taylor, who embodies the mischievous energy of Taylor Swift.

PART 1 – PERIODS IN PRISON

How did you learn how you would get menstrual products?

When you finally settle in, the girls in the dorm would tell you, ‘Hey, once a month they do tissue and tampons, pads, and that’s usually this certain time or whatever.’ They just kind of word of mouth let us know if the time changed and that, but certainly nothing was posted. They would issue toilet paper to us once a week, and it alternated between one roll or two rolls. Once a month they issued six tampons and 24 pads. Those things could be bought off commissary. But a lot of women were indigent and couldn’t afford to buy tissue and tampons. Pads were never sold. I think pantyliners were eventually sold, but you did get a free issue once a month.

What quality were the menstrual products you had access to?

Oh terrible, terrible. Terrible! The girls used to make their own tampons out of pads, which they said held much better even though they didn’t have an applicator and they just had to insert it. I would not do that because I’m scared of toxic shock, but the quality is just terrible. The worst, most uncomfortable, cheap product. The pads would fall apart inside your panties. The cotton would come undone. The tampons were just the cheapest cardboard kind.

Could you ask for more supplies?

Theoretically, by policy, the Texas Department of Criminal Justice (hereafter TDCJ) will say that yes, you can do that. But no, you can’t. Now you can go to a guard and say, ‘Hey, I need some pads and do you have any tampons?’ It was never mandatory they give out tampons. But it was theoretically mandatory that if you asked for a pad they had to give you one. Now that was up to the officer if they felt like it. But most of the time they simply didn’t have it. Period. It was always in short supply all over the unit. So that’s why women would hoard those things. But of course, in prison, you have all these, especially with women, very arbitrary, petty rules that men often aren’t subjected to. And I don’t know if that was the system’s way of finding some way to fuck with us because we didn’t have the type of issues that men did. Women would hoard things, but you had your allotment, I think you were allowed to keep 12 tampons and 24 pads on your person. If you had more than that, you got a disciplinary case for it. So, the women that bled heavily, they would go through that package of pads pretty quickly and a lot of times the tampons, they weren’t really effective. They didn’t last long. So they would hoard those things. And they would get them confiscated. A lot of times an officer would go through the door and would look to confiscate those so they would have some in the picket [communal box] to hand out if people needed one.

So, you could ask the women around you if you were in the dorm. We tried to be as generous as we could but a lot of times, I remember telling my friend, it was in the article that I wrote, like, ‘Girl, I gotta hide and make sure nobody sees me pulling these tampons out cause I don’t want nobody to ask me for one because, now I’ma feel bad, but I can’t afford it. I’m not gonna.’ I remember times not having anything. I’ll never go through that again. So I would hide my stashes at work. So, you could ask somebody, but if you got caught giving that to one another, even though it was a state-issued product, you’re gonna get disciplinary cause you’re not allowed to give each other stuff.

If you don’t have anything, you make something. And this is true in county jails as well, especially depending on what county you’re in.

There was a time I had to wear a sock in my pants.

I cannot go to court and not have anything. I can’t, because I think as women we all know that there’s just this cultural shaming if we have blood on our clothes. It’s one of the most terrifying things that you experience as a woman and as a girl as you get your period.

In TDCJ, in state prison, our uniforms are white. And we had to keep our shirts tucked in. So, when women bled on themselves, it was pretty noticeable.

I worked in the education building. And, we had three female officers that worked in our education building. We were only given bathroom breaks at a certain time, and if you had to come use the bathroom outside of those times there was a lot of shame, guilting, threatening with cases. Going to the bathroom is such a big deal at a women’s unit. So, the women would come out and say, ‘I need to go to the bathroom. I feel like I’m bleeding on myself. I’ve bled through and it’s on my clothes and I need to go to the dorm and change.’ The officer would take her into the bathroom, ‘Show me. Show me on the inside of your clothes, if I can’t see it on the outside. Show me.’ To prove that you’re not lying, that you’re not trying to go back to the dorm. And they would say, ‘That’s not enough.’ Like, you haven’t bled enough through your clothes to go back to the dorm. So, these women are walking around like that, and that happens a lot.

It’s a very specific feeling of degradation. I remember last winter Texas had a terrible winter storm. Our electric grid almost collapsed. The officers at all the units were short-staffed because of covid and then they couldn’t get in because of the storm, so the officers that were at the units were forced to have mandatory overtime and were not allowed to leave the unit. And it was really interesting that some of the female officers complained about how they had bled through their clothes because they couldn’t leave the unit to go to their car to get another tampon because they didn’t bring enough in their bag and being at a male unit, certainly nothing was available. And so they’re like, ‘We had to have these degrading moments of walking around knowing that we had bled through the inside of our panties and we had to go into the bathroom and wash them out and dry them under the dryer, and how degrading we were put through this!’ And I’m like, wow, it doesn’t feel good, does it? When it was us, they certainly didn’t mind terrorizing and using that as something to degrade us with.

Was this a regular concern?

Yes. Having your period in a correctional setting every month is stressful. You have to plan every activity around it. Am I gonna bleed through? It’s an ordeal. Am I gonna get strip-searched? Because if you’re strip-searched, you’ve gotta pull that pad off, show it to the officer, throw it in the trash. If you have a tampon, you have to pull it out. A lot of times I would take my fingernail clippers and clip my string and tuck the rest of the string inside, because it was so degrading to have to do that. Sometimes people would try to schedule their visits around it. I don’t want to go get stripped while I’m on my period. I was in a strip room with about 20 women who had already been stripped and me and my friend had come in late, they dropped us off late from a transfer, and the female officer said, ‘Get naked, strip, spread it. And take that tampon out.’ And so here I am in front of 20 women in this little bitty space and they’re all sitting around the walls just watching us get stripped. You just have to turn something off inside of you so you don’t feel anything. And I had to reach in there and pull that tampon out and hold it up and show it to her in front of 20 women. It was horrifying! So, it’s not just a matter of bleeding through your clothes or having to beg for products. It’s all the other things that could happen that you have to deal with in terms of being on your cycle.

Usually strip rooms did have something available, and they would allow us, if we had to go to visitation or go off-unit, to carry one tampon or one pad with us. Sometimes they just didn’t have it. Some officers would say, ‘I don’t care. In the name of security I need to search your bloody pad.’ Never one time in twenty-something years of being incarcerated did I ever see a woman hide anything in a bloody pad or a tampon. I just never did. Now, I have seen them hide things inside of themselves, but never anything regarding a menstrual product, especially if it’s being used. So, in the name of security, just some other thing to degrade us with.

Did menstruation ever prevent you from doing things?

Some women, especially those women that bled heavy, those women could go to medical and say, ‘I can’t stop bleeding.’ They would give them diapers to wear.

Well, a woman doesn’t really wanna go to visitation in one. And those women who for whatever reason medical would not acknowledge that they’re bleeding heavily, ‘Hey you have a visit.’ ‘Uh uh, I’m not goin. I’m sorry.’ Or just telling their family, ‘Look, don’t come right now.’ There was a time that they didn’t have any, they gave us our monthly issue, and I’d already used those, and commissary didn’t have it. They were in-between contracts so they hadn’t had tampons in who even knows, and I was new to the unit so I hadn’t made friends to the point where I felt comfortable asking somebody for something. I remember rationing out my pads and it was my first period day so I was bleeding very heavily, and I just sat. I just sat there, in front of the TV. I didn’t go to chow. I didn’t go to church or anything. And I didn’t lay down until it was time to really go to sleep, because I was worried I’m gonna bleed all over myself. I just remember hours of just sitting because I was afraid to move.

What was it like to have to ask a guard or officer for products?

I think, if you really had to ask a guard, the longer you stay there the more numb you are to anything, so maybe the first year or so it’s like, ‘I don’t wanna ask because I’m embarrassed,’ because of this thing that we’ve culturally made to feel ashamed of having a period. You know, I’m embarrassed and I don’t wanna ask, and over the years you’re like, ‘Can I have some pads?’ You know? There’s still this feeling of, I fucking hated asking men. I just did. It just made me uncomfortable. I just didn’t like it. But at the same time, the officers in education, oh my god, I don’t want to have to ask them because then I’m gonna have to hear all this shaming and berating.

It’s never just, ‘Ok, here.’ It’s never that! And that’s not just tampons or pads, and tissues, it’s anything. It’s never just simply, ‘Here.’ It’s not pleasant asking them for anything other than what you have been issued.

What is the experience of having your period in prison?

How do I articulate this? Out here you don’t really think anything of it, right? You’re like, I’ll put a tampon in my purse or in my pocket, I’ve got some in the car, I’m never anywhere without being able to reach for a tampon. It’s just a very simple thing, right? If you start cramping, you just go get some Advil (ibuprofen), you might lay in bed, you might eat some chocolate. You have things to comfort you through that, right? I used to get terrible menstruation cramps! Bad! There was a long time, especially when I first came into the system, that they did not sell ibuprofen, they did not sell it. You could ask the officers for one Tylenol (acetaminophen) tablet that came in this mini little envelope, right? And you couldn’t have more than six in your possession.

I would dread when I was going to get my period, because the pain would go almost all the way down to my knees. And I would have to work out in the heat. I would have to continue to do whatever I needed to do. It was such a dreadful, horrible, feeling of being outside in the yard.

Cause we didn’t have tampons then either. We only had pads, which is, to me, another level of uncomfortable. And just not having the things that make that experience tolerable on the inside, not being able to take a shower when you want to. So if you got up in the middle of the night and you’ve bled all over yourself, well, you can go to the sink and wash some of your clothes out, but the officer’s gonna say, ‘What are you doing?’ And you’re gonna have to wait until the lights come on before you can get in the shower. So, it’s just an unpleasant experience all the way around.

My Experience of a Period in Prison – Morgan Godvin

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 6^th, 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.