MENSTRUATION IN PRISON
“Once, I found my missing sari in the trash, and it was covered in blood.”
It happened to me. Midway through a movie screening, a movie screening on periods. I sneak my way to the bathroom to discover a red lake that my body had painted on the inside of my flower pants. Luckily, there was toilet paper, I fold into a pad shape to give just enough time to walk back to my house.
This happened two days after we heard a story about periods in prison.
“What is your daily routine,” we ask a group of twenty female prisoners surrounding us. One woman looks at us and says, “some of us like to wake up at 4am because then the line to the toilet is shorter.” Another prisoner informs us that there are only 4 toilets for 115 inmates in a prison with a capacity of 30 inmates. [1]
Single use pads are a luxurious item in prison, and only a few of the prisoners can afford them; either their visitors bring them, or they are well off enough to purchase some from the “shop” located inside the prison that inflates its prices double to its original prices. [2] Single use pads are convenient but for who and for how long? The last thing you want rotting in a trash can, in an overcrowded prison, are some bloody pads. When single use or reusable pads are not available, the only option left is your fellow prisoner’s piece of clothing that you might be able to steal in the middle of the night. A former prisoner shared, “Once, I found my missing sari in the trash, and it was covered in blood.”
There are initiatives in place to provide prisoners with reusable pads, but attention must be given to the whole equation: four toilets, 115 prisoners, pads that need to be changed every 2-3 hours, already sounds catastrophic. Not to mention the cleaning and drying. A former prisoner recalls how they had to fetch the water from a far away place and due to health issues, she was unable to do so. [3] Another former prisoner described how she would hide the cloth pad underneath the rest of her laundry, to hide it from the guards or visitors.
The authorities, whether the jailer or a NGO, portrayed a single sided truth around periods in prison; “yes, of course everyone has access to water” and “yes, of course there are drying spot” were comments we heard several times, followed by a bag of reusable pads proudly presented to us. [4] Once again, the theory and lived reality remain distant.