Inmates at the Shakopee Correctional Facility were recently told to ration menstrual products such as pads and tampons to avoid a potential shortage, in a memo posted at the women’s prison that has since been removed.
“It had kind of started a buzz, and that’s how we’ve gotten to where we are right now,” said Shannon Loehrke, a spokeswoman for the Minnesota Department of Corrections. “There is no shortage. There is no rationing.”
She said the memo was posted earlier this month in the prison’s Anthony Unit by a staffer without approval from corrections officials. Prison staff later took it down, she said.
The staffer “had noticed that incarcerated people were using period products for other purposes,” Loehrke said. “So on their own initiative, decided to put up a memo that said, ‘Hey, you need to be mindful of how you use these things.’ And, you know, ‘If you don’t, we could run out,’ or something like that.”
Elizabeth Hawes, who is incarcerated at Shakopee, confirmed the story to the Star Tribune over JPay, the messaging system used by the facility. The story was first reported by MPR.
Hawes said a member of the facility’s work crew said the prison had plenty of hygiene supplies, including menstrual products. “There is really no crisis, but some staff made it into a crisis,” she wrote in a message.
Dontania Petrie, an advocate with the Incarcerated Workers Organizing Committee who was incarcerated at Shakopee and is now earning a degree in legal studies, said she was glad that inmates don’t actually need to ration supplies. But she said she was concerned the memo was posted at all. Such miscommunications can sow confusion among inmates, she said, who don’t have access to the internet to understand what items they’re lawfully entitled to have.
“If I was still in there and they told me [to ration menstrual products], emotionally that would bother me,” Petrie said. “What am I supposed to do? I don’t make enough to buy some on canteen, and you guys are supposed to be providing it, but you’re saying you don’t have enough to help me out if I start bleeding.”
