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“Why are they doing women like this? Are we the weaker sex?” Mishunda Davis told Truthout in a call from Logan Correctional Center, Illinois’s largest women’s prison. In 2022, the state passed legislation making menstrual products free for anyone incarcerated in Illinois prisons. Despite the law, Davis and others run out each month.
Menstrual care — or the lack of it — gets little attention in prisons. Women who bleed heavily or have a prolonged period can exhaust their weekly allotment of pads and tampons. Asking guards for more products can lead to punishment or abuse.
Now, a growing national movement for menstrual equity has included advocacy for people who menstruate behind bars. Miriam Vishniac, researcher and co-founder of The Prison Flow Project, told Truthout that, according to March 2025 data, there were 22 states with laws that “said they would give some amount [of menstrual products] for free to everyone.” Despite the progress, Vishniac said, there’s still a lack of information around how these laws are being implemented. “There are rules that say things should be happening, and then no monitoring or enforcement is ever talked about.”
While it had dramatically dropped during the pandemic years, women’s incarceration from 2022 to 2023, double the rate of the rise in men’s incarceration. Nearly 90 percent of people in women’s prisons are under age 55. Similar data about both age and sex is not available for local jails. Many states still have not passed legislation or other protections around the right to menstrual products.
“When is our voice going to be heard?” Davis asked.
Sanitary Pads Are a Human Right
In 2016, New York City Council passed an ordinance making tampons and pads free to those incarcerated in city jails, the first law of its kind in the country. But in 2021, the city’s Department of Correction quietly stopped distributing free tampons.
It wasn’t until two years later that the Department of Correction (DOC) admitted to this violation, invoking a loophole about security. At a 2023 City Council hearing, a DOC official said that they feared tampons would be used to smuggle contraband and that people were using tampon applicators “to smoke drugs” and tampon strings “to light drugs.” But tampons weren’t entirely banned from Rikers Island — they remained for sale at commissary, the sole store inside that carries approved items, for $15.66 per 40-tampon box. In contrast, a 40-count box costs less than $10 at local drug stores.
After being grilled at a city council hearing, the Department of Correction resumed distributing free tampons. But for two years, menstruating people earning anywhere from 55 cents to $1.55 per hour needed to work more than 15 hours to afford one box of tampons.
In 2018, two years after New York City passed its ordinance, Congress passed the First Step Act, which included a provision requiring that the Federal Bureau of Prisons make menstrual products available at no cost. The American Medical Association has endorsed free menstrual products for those in prison. Access to sanitary pads, argues Chandra Bozelko, a formerly incarcerated writer, “is not a luxury — it is a basic human right.”
Even when laws are passed, however, menstruating people are still left at the mercy of their captors.
“Systems often point to the existence of policy as evidence that the problem has been solved, while incarcerated people experience the exact opposite reality,” said Kim Haven, a formerly incarcerated woman and founding director of Reproductive Justice Inside. “The question is not simply whether products are ‘available.’ The real question is, can people access what they need consistently, safely, without humiliation, retaliation, bargaining, or dependence on officer goodwill? That distinction matters.”
Campaigning for Menstrual Equity
Mary Catherine Hanafee LaPlante was just 16 years old when she organized a rally for the first National Period Day in 2019 in downtown Chicago. Organizers collected donations of menstrual products for homeless shelters and prisons. She was shocked when she discovered that people incarcerated in women’s prisons often had to ration menstrual products, purchase them in commissary, or make their own out of whatever they could find. “The more I learned, the more horrified I became. It was inhumane in a way that should never be legal in this country,” Hanafee LaPlante told Truthout.
One of the rally’s sponsors, She Votes Illinois, invited Hanafee LaPlante to join the organization’s board as a youth representative. Together, they mounted a campaign for menstrual equity at schools, shelters, universities, and women’s prisons in Illinois. As Maureen Keane, co-founder of She Votes Illinois, recounted to Truthout, “Mary Catherine highlighted that people who menstruated in prisons were being overlooked in this initiative.” She Votes researched model legislation from other states and drafted a bill to provide free access to menstrual products.
While many other bills were specific to incarcerated women, the Illinois bill refers to those “who menstruate,” which includes transgender men who menstruate, Keane explained. The bill also provides free underwear for incarcerated people as well as free menstrual products to prison employees. The bill passed in 2022 with bipartisan support.
But even with legislation, Keane admits, “we know that’s not necessarily happening.”
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In response to a recent Freedom of Information Act request for any policy related to menstrual products, the Illinois Department of Corrections replied, “IDOC does not possess or maintain records responsive to your request.”
Mishunda Davis gave a picture of how the law is implemented in prison. Every week, staff distribute 10 products, “pads or tampons depending on what they have to give you that week.” Women who are heavy bleeders may run out after a day or two, she said. If women share, they risk a disciplinary ticket.
Extra supplies and underwear can be purchased at commissary. Davis makes $27 a week at her job, but a box of 18 tampons costs $10, more than one-third of her wages. Commissary was also only available once a month at Logan; at men’s prisons, commissary is every two weeks.
After the women mounted a campaign, they were allowed to shop at commissary every two weeks. “It seems since everyone had their family calling Springfield,” Davis wrote over the prison’s text messaging system, “they [are] trying to shop us on time.”
Access Is a Power Issue
Illinois isn’t the only state where menstruating people must face shame and humiliation.
Texas law states that prisons must provide “up to ten feminine hygiene products per day that comply with applicable federal standards for comfort, effectiveness, and safety.”
But that’s not what happens in the state’s women’s prisons, where staff hand out one 24-pack of pads and five tampons per month.
“I have always wondered who decided the amount and how did they come to say five regular tampons were enough,” mused Aisha Bailey, who is currently imprisoned at the Lane Murray Unit in Gatesville, Texas.
Texas prison uniforms are white and, she says, staff are unsympathetic if someone bleeds through their clothes.
Bailey is in the segregation unit, where staff are supposed to distribute supplies the first weekend of each month. But, she said, “security assigned to the building doesn’t always pass them out … then during those times you can hear people yelling for an officer and requesting pads/tampons. Most officers that work solitary forget so someone may spend a day or two asking for the pads.”
Kayelin Tiggs, founder of the Ohio Coalition for Menstrual Equity and board member of the Prison Flow Project emphasized the importance of exact language in the bill. “The law specifically states that it’s not just free products, it’s free products with 24-hour access. It’s free products at the appropriate amount that you need. It’s free products when you need them,” Tiggs told Truthout.
Tiggs led a campaign to pass a law in Ohio. That law, which took effect in March 2026, contains language to ensure menstruating people receive an adequate supply of products. “But,” she concedes, “a lot of the other states do not have that specific language in there.”
Haven notes that, no matter what the law, the problem remains with incarceration itself. “What is especially important is understanding that menstrual access inside is not merely a ‘women’s issue’ or a supply issue. It is a power issue,” she said. “Control over hygiene, bodily care, movement, and privacy has historically functioned as a mechanism of institutional control in carceral settings. Menstrual deprivation becomes part of a larger architecture of dehumanization.”
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