A Vicious Cycle
In the American carceral system, tampons are a case study for abolition
Art by Kristina Tzekova
available in Mother tongue’s issue 10 (print)
Kimberly Haven placed her tampon on the lectern. Unused, homemade, it had been assembled a few hours prior. The process was the same as always: dissecting a pad, rolling the inner fluff tightly inside the pad’s original outer layer—which conveniently tails off to be a tampon string—finely twisted and knotted to stay in place. This time, though, Kimberly wasn’t making it for a friend who had run out of their monthly, allotted supply. Instead, it was a prop for the audience, a room full of Maryland legislators. While reluctant to showcase something that held shame in its very fibers, she arrived at the bill hearing (two years after her release from prison in 2015) to advocate for menstrual equity for those incarcerated. So she began: “Now I ask you, do you want to put this in your body? Would you want your mother, your sister, your daughter to put this in their bodies?” A resounding silence and shaking of heads answered her question.
Kimberly became the self-proclaimed “queen of homemade tampons” during her incarceration. After experiencing three significant bleeding incidents, she requested menstrual products only to be denied. Her records showed she had undergone chemo-induced menopause—she wasn’t “supposed” to bleed. Forced to take matters into her own hands for over a year, she finally returned home where a visit to the OBGYN segued into an emergency hysterectomy due to severe gynecologic complications caused by the lack of adequate menstrual hygiene during her incarceration. In time, Kimberly relied on these tampon presentations to galvanize her menstruation equity bill. With a unanimous vote, Maryland became the fifth state requiring prisons and jails to provide free access to pads and tampons. A few months ago, I sat with Kimberly as she walked me through the moments that led to her role as a policy architect. “This issue is not about hygiene; it’s about power,” she said. “If they can weaponize tampons, they can weaponize anything.”
In a carceral setting, the tampon is a protagonist. Its presence and absence alike reveal the impetus of confinement: to control, to shame, to sever outside connection and to perform, but not practice, whatever our society means by “rehabilitation.” If you’re new to this conversation—be it the criminal legal system or menstruating within it—you should know that logic rarely wins here. That if you continue to poke and prod for an answer that feels responsible or sound, you likely won’t; rather, you’ll hit a dead end.
On an average day at the California Institute for Women (CIW), a correctional facility in Chino, tampons, pads and toilet paper are stocked on communal shelves for the 140 or so people confined per unit. Certain prisons still do not allow free access to menstrual products; instead, incarcerated women are allotted a monthly amount, usually about a pack’s worth, and are otherwise forced to buy products at inflated prices. (In Michigan, for instance, tampons can cost up to $9, while the average wage is between 84 cents and $3.34 per day.) But California is one of the 24 states that (on paper) require access; when products run low, unit porters take to the supply closet to replenish. If no backups remain, women typically request more from the correctional officer (CO) on duty. But there are days when Jessicah Cowan, incarcerated at CIW, doesn’t ask; one CO on rotation is infamous for refusing to restock, either instructing those under her surveillance to make do or insisting on overturning every cell for “excess.” Not wanting everyone on the unit to get punished, Jessicah’s remaining choices are to ask neighbors or file a grievance. The latter is “a process I have to be very mindful of, because retaliation is absolutely a real thing,” she shares over the phone, citing the possibility of other officers taking her personal property or filing a misbehavior report in solidarity. “The threat of a write-up can add another five years of me staying here.”
Experiences like Jessicah’s echo across state lines as the tampon’s rationing and consequential criminalization has become a structural phenomenon. Over in Gatesville, Texas, Kwaneta Harris describes the umpteenth time she was denied products because she’s going through menopause. “One guard told me, ‘You’re not supposed to need these anymore,’” she relays on our second 15-minute phone call. “They’re basically saying, ‘We even have the power to control your biology.’”
Her daughter, Alana, tells me about a recent phone call with Kwaneta: Alana was at work and grabbed a pad to change in the bathroom. “[My mom] asked me, ‘You didn’t have it in a purse? You should have!’” Alana says. “I said, ‘Who cares? We aren’t ashamed. The world isn’t the same as when you left.’” Incarcerated for nearly two decades, Kwaneta has seen it all: While working and picking vegetables in the prison’s fields, she has joined others to form a privacy circle around peers as they change their tampons covertly (using the grass to wipe their hands). She has also seen women electing to get Depo-Provera so they can avoid bleeding entirely. And, as is common nationwide, incarcerated women are often required to remove tampons or pads in front of officers during strip searches.
This constructed humiliation is quite literally bleeding into the outside. Since August of 2025, the New York Civil Liberties Union (NYCLU) has received complaints from women visiting family members in New York prisons, reporting six-month, one-year or indefinite suspensions related to body scans flagged as suspicious. The reason? The presence of a tampon, cup or IUD. NYCLU attorney Megan Porter estimates that about 100 women have reported being denied visitation because of these menstrual products. One woman told Porter she was required to remove her pad for a scan and left to bleed through her visit. Others brought packaging or doctors' notes for menstrual cups and IUDs, to no avail. Dealing with this arbitrary fixation (blatant discrimination) is a catch-22 for visitors. “There’s a callousness these women expect from COs when they’re going to visitation—they don’t want to make them upset, because they want to get inside and see their loved one,” Porter says.
The threat of contraband is the typically cited justification for body scanners, which have been increasingly instituted in prisons over the last few years. And yet, while it’s widely understood and reported that COs are often a source of illegal materials entering the prison, they are not subjected to scans. This prejudicial treatment toward those menstruating—essentially denying them entry for the offense of having a cycle—is emptying visitation rooms, which are (for all carceral facilities) more often than not populated by women.
A mother’s visitation ban also means that her children are often restricted from seeing their incarcerated loved one. What is billed as a preventative measure against contraband instead serves to deepen separation. “By cutting people off from their visitation, from their families and loved ones, you’re not just doing a disservice to them by rupturing those family relationships while they’re inside,” Porter adds. “You’re causing a long-term rupture that makes it difficult for them to come home.” One of the biggest predictors of one’s ability to survive incarceration and return home with mental health somewhat intact and a propensity to reacclimate is maintaining outside connections. These scans are a tool for severing those odds, perpetuating the myth that incarcerated people are unfit for society.
Dissecting the criminal legal system isn't entirely dissimilar from deconstructing a pad to make a tampon: The end result is toxic and begs the question of an entirely new design. Consider the decision tree of menstruating while incarcerated, demonstrated across state lines:
If a woman runs out of tampons, asking a guard can mean humiliation or neglect. Asking a neighbor relies on which officer is on duty; some “really discourage community, saying ‘no cell-to-cell or hall-to-hall visiting,’” Jessicah says. “Sometimes I can’t even knock on someone’s door and ask.” Incarcerated in Michigan, India Porter barters her own commissary items with women who no longer have cycles. “I’ll say, ‘Hey, can I [trade] a honey bun or cinnamon roll for pads?’” But storing “excess” products is also an infraction. At one point, India shares that her facility “tried to create this narrative that we were wasting sanitary napkins, misusing them for other purposes.” Bartering, too, can lead to write-ups, loss of privileges, cell searches and, in extreme instances, solitary confinement. (According to a report by the Prison Policy Institute this past November, women in state prisons are more likely to be disciplined and receive disproportionate punishment).
Resorting to bleeding without protection can be mortifying and, in some reported instances, risks destroying state property, which can invite disciplinary action. At India’s facility, “count”— literally the counting of human beings while incarcerated—happens three times a day. “A lot of times, if you need to use the restroom to change or refresh, you can just be told no,” she shares. “If I have an accident, I’m forced to stand there at the mercy of staff.” Count can last anywhere from 45 minutes to an hour. Additionally, in some facilities, tampons and pads are only available in the housing unit—not in programming areas. “Participating in programs can decrease one’s sentence, so you have to be willing to be away from those menstrual products for eight hours at a time,” says Miriam Vishniac, who founded The Prison Flow Project to pool research on menstruation in prisons. “You have to choose between public humiliation and spending less time in prison.”
Diva cups or period underwear require significantly better sanitary conditions than are available—most women don’t even trust the laundry machines with their current underwear; “it comes back brown,” Kwaneta says. And of course, as with Jessicah’s experience in California, implementation of current policy requiring free access is inconsistent at best. “There’s no accountability, no tracking, no reporting,” says menstrual equity advocate Kimberly. “I can’t fight what I can’t see, and I can’t see what they won’t show me.”
Seeking more information about her body, Jessicah requested an appointment with the unit’s gynecologist multiple times. Her doctor continuously insists this isn’t possible. “It’s like the Wizard of Oz has to grant me permission,” she shares. And when Kwaneta and other women in her facility have expressed interest in instructional templates around products, that too has been denied. “They’re considered sexually explicit because of the illustrations,” she says.
Dead end after dead end after dead end. Like food, like sleep, like phone access, menstruation is one of many “mechanisms of submission,” in Kimberly’s words, that signals how integral institutional monitoring and shaming are to the functioning of carceral facilities.
Why else would a system that claims to create safety force menstruators to bleed on themselves, or to wear the same tampon for hours longer than medically advised? Why would a system that purports to deliver justice permit officers to question incarcerated women about their cycles, denying them products because enough days haven’t passed since their last period? Why would a system that touts serving and protecting refuse entry to a mother and child visiting their family member because the mother is using a tampon?
The tampon has become one of a multitude of examples that ultimately helps build a case for the abolition, or at the very least, a major reassessment of a truly punitive institution. We tell ourselves we lock people away to keep the public safe, but perhaps it’s time we question if that is really the purpose. Perhaps it’s time we invest in a response to harm that doesn’t perpetuate more harm.
Jennifer Toon, co-founder of Lioness Justice Impacted Women’s Alliance, which advocates for incarcerated women’s rights, underscores that our criminal legal system is a result of laziness and lack of innovation. As someone who also spent time incarcerated, she shares that “punishment and fear are not what motivate people … Treating people like garbage is not what makes us want to be great neighbors, especially when we have no bond to a community [that] we [have already] internalized doesn’t care about us.” What motivates Jennifer to “stay free” is “the healing, [my] community and my goals.”
Jennifer started going to the doctor just last year—seven years after her release. Incarceration planted a deep mistrust of medical professionals and safe spaces were nonexistent; that feeling seeps into outside living. “I don’t need to get undressed, I don’t trust you to take my concern seriously,” she says. She is also minimalist to the extreme, refusing to buy tampons if she has even four left at home. And when going on a trip, she instinctively arranges flights around bleeding. “I know it’s unreasonable,” she laments, “but I scheduled activities around my period in prison because of access and shame.”
As those like Jennifer and Kimberly embolden women who are both incarcerated and recently released to speak about cruel and unjust conditions inside, their comrades dream about what taking care of themselves might one day look and feel like. For Jessicah, it’s a heating pad and a comfortable bed. And for India, “Oh, my God, a bathtub,” she says. “I want to deal with this in privacy. And for my body to be sacred, not just a piece of community property.”