This December, WAMI organized and donated eight-hundred care packages for our incarcerated sisters at York Correctional Institution. Our care packages included seemingly basic items like menstrual products, hand sanitizer, masks, and wipes. But while these items may seem accessible, they are not at all so for our sisters at York. While COVID-19’s prevalence has died down outside of prison, it still runs rampant inside of prisons, where incarcerated people have no way to protect themselves from the virus, which can enter through wardens and other prison employees. For our sisters at YCI, menstrual products, which should be a basic right, are not easily obtained or accessible at all. Incarcerated women, if they are even provided menstrual products, are provided them in scant and poor quality, and if they need more than their “allotment,” they must buy them in the prison’s commissary, where prices are high in comparison to the wages made by jobs in the prison. You can learn more about this issue by reading this article on USA Today which discusses one woman’s unjust and inequitable experience with menstrual products in York.
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