By: Rosemary Edwards
Published: November 15, 2025
Since 1980, the number of incarcerated women in U.S. prisons has increased from 26,326 to 180,684.[1] With this rise in carceral population, the number of menstruating individuals also rose, increasing the need for period products to be available to inmates. According to the World Bank, a lack of access to menstrual products can lead to devastating health risks, “like reproductive and urinary tract infections which can result in future infertility and birth complications” as well as Toxic Shock Syndrome.[2] Under the Eighth Amendment, incarcerated individuals must be free from cruel and unusual punishment to ensure that individuals are still treated as people while incarcerated.[3] Due to the severe health risks and degradation involved in denying period products to menstruating inmates, the failure to provide adequate menstrual hygiene warrants a violation of the Eighth Amendment.[4]
As of July 2025, only 26 states have laws requiring correctional facilities to provide menstrual products to incarcerated individuals in some capacity.[5] The protection provided by these laws varies by state, with some states requiring menstrual products to be provided at no cost as needed, while other states only require correctional facilities to have a policy in place for providing hygiene products to incarcerated persons.[6] Even in states with these laws in place, the enforcement of hygiene policies is generally up to the individual correctional facilities.[7] This lack of consistent regulation and enforcement can often result in a severe lack of compliance or drastically warped interpretations of the law that go uncorrected.[8] Of the 37 states that do permit penal facilities to charge for menstrual products, many require payment that far exceeds the price most inmates are able to pay when only earning an average of thirty cents per hour for their work.[9] The inaccessibility of pads, tampons, and other menstrual hygiene products in prisons can lead to serious health risks, such as “toxic shock syndrome, fungal infections, urinary tract infections, reproductive tract infections and even infertility.”[10]
This egregious denial of access to an individual’s basic necessities is a violation of the Eight Amendment’s protections against cruel and unusual punishment.[11] In Rhodes v. Chapman, the Supreme Court stated that prison conditions must not deprive incarcerated individuals of minimal necessities that are required by civilized society or that result in the wanton infliction of pain.[12] In 1991, the Court expanded this rule in Farmer v. Brennan by holding that the Eighth Amendment is violated when individuals at risk of harm are treated with deliberate indifference by corrections officials who have actual knowledge of the risk.[13] The 10th Circuit further supplemented this rule, holding that prison officials’ refusal to provide access to appropriate hygiene items that results in the inmate’s serious injury qualifies as an Eighth Amendment violation.[14]
Previously incarcerated women have shared the shame and humiliation that pervades through the prison system due to the lack of feminine hygiene products.[15] Individuals experiencing menstrual cycles while incarcerated are forced to use period products far past the time recommended for safe use, reuse the same period pads over several months, and even rip up cloth to create make-shift period pads after being denied access to adequate hygiene products.[16] Carceral facilities enable an environment in which incarcerated women are bleeding through clothing, bartering or fighting for pads and tampons, and even being coerced into having intercourse with correctional officers in exchange for menstrual products.[17] This forces incarcerated individuals to wear stained and dirty uniforms, humiliating them in front of their peers and supervisors—and effectively ensuring the inability to feel human while incarcerated.[18] In essence, incarcerated women are barred access to basic feminine hygiene care due to facility policies that impact affordability of menstrual products and a culture that promotes a lack of accountability across correctional facilities adherence to prison health care standards.
While the prevalent issue of inadequate prison healthcare policies that negatively affect female inmates has been acknowledged, courts have rarely been willing to view a lack of menstrual hygiene as a violation of Eighth Amendment rights.[19] The severe degree to which menstrual products are inaccessible in many correctional facilities is an imposition of cruel and unusual punishment. [20] The refusal to provide basic hygiene care is evidence of correctional facilities’ wanton and willful disregard to the harm being imposed upon menstruating incarcerated individuals.[21] Additionally, requiring an individual to pay for necessary hygiene products while providing insufficient employment wages to afford them is manipulative and harmful to the individual’s ability to be treated in a humane and civilized manner.[22] If the courts are unwilling to hold that lack of access to menstrual products violates the Eighth Amendment, then state legislatures must take responsibility to enact and enforce laws that require prisons to provide free, readily accessible menstrual hygiene products to incarcerated individuals without having to sacrifice their human dignity.
[1] See Kristen M. Budd, Incarcerated Women and Girls, The Sent’g Project (July 24, 2024), https://www.sentencingproject.org/fact-sheet/incarcerated-women-and-girls/ (citing an increase in number of incarcerated women in 1980 as over six times that of the number in 2024).
[2] See Menstrual Health and Hygiene, World Bank Grp., https://www.worldbank.org/en/topic/water/brief/menstrual-health-and-hygiene (last visited Aug. 28, 2025).
[3] See Rhodes v. Chapman, 452 U.S. 337, 347 (1981).
[4] See U.S. Const. amend. VIII (prohibiting cruel and unusual punishment, which includes the government’s duty to provide basic human needs such as hygiene to incarcerated individuals).
[5] See State Laws Around Menstrual Products in Prison, The Prison Flow Project (July 8, 2025), https://theprisonflowproject.com/state-laws-around-access/.
[6] See id.
[7] See Budd, supra note 1.
[8] See Budd, supra note 1.
[9] See David Straughan, U.S. Prisons Still Don’t Have Adequate Menstrual Supplies in 2021, Interrogating Justice (Aug. 19, 2021), https://interrogatingjustice.org/prisons/prisons-menstrual-supplies-2021/.
[10] See Jennifer Leto, The Availability of Feminine Products for Incarcerated Women, U. Miami Race & Soc. Just. L. Rev. (2018), https://race-and-social-justice-review.law.miami.edu/availability-feminine-products-incarcerated-women/.
[11] U.S. Const. amend. VIII (prohibiting cruel and unusual punishment, which courts interpret to forbid inhumane conditions or deliberate indifference to serious medical needs).
[12] See Rhodes v. Chapman, 452 U.S. 337, 347 (1981).
[13] See Farmer v. Brennan, 511 U.S. 825, 831 (1994).
[14] See Penrod v. Zavaras, 94 F.3d 1399, 1406 (10th Cir. 1996).
[15] See Anabel Sosa & Keri Blakinger, For Some Incarcerated Women, Getting Ahold of Menstrual Products is a Nightmare, L.A. Times (June 2, 2024), https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2024-06-02/for-some-incarcerated-women-getting-ahold-of-menstrual-products-isnt-easy.
[16] See Victoria Law & Rachel Kauder Nalebuff, Prisons Use Menstruation as a Form of Punishment, Time (Mar. 29, 2023), https://time.com/6265653/prison-menstruation-punishment/ (reporting that some prisons restrict menstrual products as a disciplinary tactic, illustrating the systemic control of women’s bodily autonomy in confinement).
[17] See Jean Lee, 5 Pads for 2 Cellmates: Period Inequity Remains a Problem in Prisons, USA Today (July 18, 2021), https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2021/07/13/lack-access-period-products-prisons-widespread-us/7932448002/; Shilpa Darivemula et al., Menstrual Equity in the Criminal Legal System, J. Womens Health (2023), https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10510683/#B1; Law & Kauder, supra note 16.
[18] See Sosa & Blakinger, supra note 15.
[19] See Lucas v. Turn Key Health Clinics, LLC, 58 F.4th 1127, 1142 (10th Cir. 2023) (acknowledging the lack of appropriate medical care related to menstrual hygiene); Chavarriaga v. NJ Dep’t of Corr., 806 F.3d 210, 228 (3d Cir. 2015) (finding that the deprivation of period products can amount to an Eighth Amendment, U.S. Const. amend. VIII, violation).
[20] See generally U.S. Const. amend. VIII (defining “cruel and unusual punishments” as those contrary to evolving standards of decency).
[21] See Rhodes v. Chapman, 452 U.S. 337, 346 (1981); Darivemula, supra note 17.
[22] See Straughan, supra note 8; Rhodes, 452 U.S. at 347.