Women's Rights & Issues
Related: About this forumPrisons that withhold menstrual pads humiliate women and violate basic rights
Prisons that withhold menstrual pads humiliate women and violate basic rights
Chandra Bozelko
Stains on clothes seep into self-esteem and reinforce powerlessness. Thats why wardens keep sanitation just out of reach
Friday 12 June 2015 07.30 EDT
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Many female inmates in US prisons do not receive adequate access to sanitary napkins. Photograph: JIM LO SCALZO/EPA
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Everyone laughed when Piper Chapman emerged from the shower during the first season of Orange Is the New Black with bootleg shoes made of maxi pads and inmates do sometimes waste precious resources like sanitary products with off-label uses. At York Correctional Institution in Niantic, Connecticut, where I spent more than six years, I used the tampons as scouring pads certainly not as sponges, because prison tampons are essentially waterproof when I needed to clean a stubborn mess in my cell.
That should not lead anyone to think that sanitary products are easy to come by in jail. At York, each cell, which houses two female inmates, receives five pads per week to split. Im not sure what they expect us to do with the fifth but this comes out to 10 total for each woman, allowing for only one change a day in an average five-day monthly cycle. The lack of sanitary supplies is so bad in womens prisons that I have seen pads fly right out of an inmates pants: prison maxi pads dont have wings and they have only average adhesive so, when a woman wears the same pad for several days because she cant find a fresh one, that pad often fails to stick to her underwear and the pad falls out. Its disgusting but its true.
The only reason I dodged having a maxi pad slither off my leg is that I layered and quilted together about six at a time so I could wear a homemade diaper that was too big to slide down my pants. I had enough supplies to do so because I bought my pads from the commissary. However, approximately 80% of inmates are indigent and cannot afford to pay the $2.63 the maxi pads cost per package of 24, as most earn 75 cents a day and need to buy other necessities like toothpaste ($1.50, or two days pay) and deodorant ($1.93, almost three days pay). Sometimes I couldnt get the pads because the commissary ran out: they kept them in short supply as it appeared I was the only one buying them.
Connecticut is not alone in being cheap with its supplies for women. Inmates in Michigan filed suit last December alleging that pads and tampons are so scarce that their civil rights have been violated. One woman bled through her uniform and was required to dress herself in her soiled jumpsuit after stripping for a search.
The reasons for keeping supplies for women in prison limited are not purely financial. Even though keeping inmates clean would seem to be in the prisons self-interest, prisons control their wards by keeping sanitation just out of reach. Stains on clothes seep into self-esteem and serve as an indelible reminder of ones powerlessness in prison. Asking for something you need crystallizes the power differential between inmates and guards; the officer can either meet your need or he can refuse you, and theres little you can do to influence his choice.
More:
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/jun/12/prisons-menstrual-pads-humiliate-women-violate-rights
It has NEVER occurred to me that anyone would ever consider doing this to any woman. It is astonishing. I can't believe it wasn't terminated right after the first time anyone did it to someone. Unforgiveable. They'd better hope something this disrespectful never happens to them.
Just because someone's in prison shouldn't mean authorities are welcome to do any vicious thing to them they want. God.
marym625
(17,997 posts)Kalidurga
(14,177 posts)I hope they win the lawsuit. I also hope that anyone who can and lives near a woman's prison can go there and make a donation to the women who need it to buy sanitary products. If product donations are allowed it would be better to do that, since the ones the prison has are horrible.
Novara
(5,842 posts)How do you know they'd get where you intended?
This is absolutely despicable.