Stained underwear, male guards and no privacy: what it’s like to have your period in prison

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/sep/24/prison-period

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In my 15 years of incarceration, I’ve seen women’s bodily needs disregarded constantly. One solution could grant us back some dignity

This story was published in partnership with Prison Journalism Project, a national non-profit organization that trains incarcerated writers in journalism and publishes their work. Sign up for PJP’s newsletter, follow them on Instagram and Bluesky, or connect with them on LinkedIn.

It truly is a man’s world, even in a women’s prison.

In an environment where nothing is private, even the most basic aspects of personal care become luxuries. For incarcerated women, managing a menstrual cycle is not just a routine part of life – it is often a monumental struggle.

I have been incarcerated for 15 years. The last three have been spent at Eddie Warrior correctional center, a minimum-security prison in Oklahoma. Here, I have rarely observed staff show empathy or provide accommodations to women having fatigue, cramps, mood swings or pain connected to their period. We are not allowed to take days off from work to rest, and we must adhere to a strict daily schedule in which virtually all of our movement is controlled.

There were 2,220 women incarcerated in Oklahoma as of September 2024, according to a report from the state department of corrections, and 190,600 women in jails and prisons across the US in 2024. According to 2023 reporting from Time magazine, about 90% of them are younger than 55. Tens of thousands of women menstruate in prisons across the country.

“I was going through menopause, bleeding heavily, inordinately heavy,” Geneva Phillips, a 52-year-old resident at the correctional center, told me. “I was going through a super tampon and a pad in an hour, every hour.”

She recalled bleeding during count, a procedure during which guards make sure everyone is accounted for and residents are not allowed to move from their bunks. This particular count lasted an entire hour; she was forced to bleed through her underwear, her pants and, finally, her white blanket.

She had to take everything to the shower – in full view of the other 160 women in the dorm – wash it all in cold water, and then remake her bed with the wet blanket.

When a woman enters prison in Oklahoma, she receives two initial pairs of panties, ordered by the state from prison supplier Bob Barker.

If you are fortunate enough to have family or friends who can order you some panties from the approved catalog, they will have three options, all of which are white.

We are only allowed to own seven pairs in total. In order to exchange your state-allotted pairs for new ones, you must submit to a bunk search and an officer must verify to the property officer that you do not own more than seven pairs.

This means that clean, unblemished underwear are some of the most cherished possessions we own.

Maintaining the prison panty

Anyone who has experienced a period inside or outside prison has a shared experience: the overflow. The state issues incarcerated women 15 pads and just 10 tampons per month (five regular and five super), the same brand and style they offer in the canteen if you can afford them. The sanitary pads do not have wings, and only a short while after inserting them, we are left with a crumpled mess.

Without easy access to sufficient period supplies, our natural bodily functions can transform previously pristine white underwear into a source of shame and embarrassment.

For the incarcerated woman, the experience is very public. We cannot adequately clean our underwear without access to bleach, peroxide, baking soda or vinegar. Stain removal is an immense task. And if a pair of panties cannot be salvaged, we cannot just throw them out and buy more immediately, as it can take weeks or months for new underwear to be delivered.

Only people who are considered indigent, those who have received or made no more than $15 in a 30-day period, are able to get extra state-issued underwear, according to our prisons policy.

Bar of soap in hand, we use the showers, communal sinks or space around our bunks to wash them.

Then it’s the dealer’s choice: do you put your wet, most likely stained panties in your laundry bag to be seen and dealt with by the laundry attendants? Or do you hang them up in your bed area for everyone to view as they flap in the airflow from a fan bought from the canteen?

If you choose the latter method, you have to hang them up on the rails of bunk beds, or clip them to the wall of a cube cell – and only during recreational hours. Otherwise you must keep them in your shower bag.

All this opens us up to being talked about and publicly shamed, by other women no less, along with prison staff.

Limited laundry resources

Mary Arreola, 38, is a laundry attendant at our prison, where she estimates she washes on average 25 loads of clothes per shift. Arreola said she was told that she was only allowed to use a plastic soda bottle cap’s worth of state-supplied laundry soap per load. She told me that they receive four 26oz bottles per day to service an average of 100 loads.

“The soap is already watered down, but to make it last sometimes I have to add more water,” Arreola said.

She also explained that she is not able to freely use bleach, which is considered contraband. She has to go to a guard on duty. If that guard is understanding and compassionate, they may fulfil the request, but this is not always the case. She would have to explain to the guard why she needs it, exposing her peers to the indignity of it all.

Some are able to go to the canteen and buy laundry soap, but not everyone can afford to. Once a month, these indigent residents receive a brown paper bag with supplies including a single hotel-sized bar of soap.

The tiny bar of soap is meant to last an entire month. By the end of it, many of us must choose between using it to clean our bodies or our underwear.

A simple solution

In a single day, I have gone through all seven pairs of my underwear.

I am now considered perimenopausal and have suffered from thyroid problems throughout my incarceration. This has made my period unpredictable and difficult to manage. Some months, I will bleed heavily, while others, not so much. If I need more than my allotted period supplies, my only option is to ask an officer. The same goes for any woman with a health condition such as a hormone imbalance or endometriosis that causes excessive bleeding. In my experience, they will not give you another full issuance; instead, they give you a few at a time so you have to repeatedly ask.

Most of the officers are men and generally not sensitive to our needs, even though they work in a women’s prison. Sometimes they are younger and shy away from the subject because they believe that these are private issues and should be dealt with as such.

The disregard for our bodily needs, along with the lack of compassion we receive, affects all incarcerated women and serves as a secondary punishment driven simply by our biology.

A simple but meaningful solution would be to change the color of our panties to either a dark brown or black. This would be a small step toward returning to us a sense of worth and dignity, which is relentlessly denied women behind bars.

Kelsey Dodson is a recognized member of the Cherokee Nation, a licensed cosmetologist and the co-editor of the Warrior Standard, an award-winning newspaper at her prison. She is now pursuing an associates degree in business.