Recap of last week’s blog post includes: defining that prison reform is an effort to improve the conditions of what inmates go through, provide different aspects of rehabilitation, and it’s able to benefit the criminal justice system. Issues within prisons are often overlooked by the government. As much as I would love to continue to discuss what prison reform is, let’s talk about why it is necessary in regards to women who are incarcerated. 

Prison reform has the opportunity to bring attention to the concern female inmates have. For women who are incarcerated in America, it seems like practicing proper menstrual hygiene is almost impossible. In this blog we’ll discuss how badly women in the prison system are being treated. Studies have shown that women make up most of the prison population, 6.4% of adult inmates. Incarcerated women feel disgusted, ill, and humiliated because they do not have access to pads or tampons, or proper hygiene necessities. This is a violation of their constitutional right to basic cleanliness. Cases that are relevant to this violation are: Carver vs. Knox County Tennessee in 1989, Carty vs. Farrelly in 1997, and Atkins vs. County of Orange in 2005, all ruled that failing to provide or denying access to sanitary items violates the Eighth Amendment. The cases I have mentioned above indicates that prisons need to practice good hygiene and provide necessities needed for both men and women. 

The women who are facing these troubling conditions in prisons witness that being able to reform prison conditions and establishing some form of menstrual equity is a challenging task. Efforts that have been done to respond to these detailing prison conditions have been that a handful of senators and representatives are showing support. The issues women face in prisons are being recognized, but is it too late? Many of these representatives and senators introduced some form of legislation in 2017 to provide menstrual equity in federal prisons. The Senators involved include: Cory Booker (D-NJ), Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), Dick Durbin (D-IL), and Kamala Harris (D-CA). They have introduced the Dignity for Incarcerated Women Act, it is to improve the treatment of federal prisoners. The bill proposed a plethora of reforms that were designed to improve the conditions of women in prisons, such as ending the shackling and solitary confinement of pregnant women, increasing visitations between mothers and their children, and increasing access to menstrual products. The reforms introduced show society that prisoners are still humans, despite the stereotype that all prisoners are evil.