Trigger warning: prisoner abuse
The National Family Health Survey 4 (2015-’16) reported that 58% of the menstruating population of India used pads; but they failed to include data from a category which includes almost 20,000 women. The category is that of the female prisoners of India.
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Most menstrual health advocates and activists forget about the imprisoned women in India. At least 60% of women in Indian prisons are from a financially weak background, whose families’ monthly incomes are around ₹5,000 or less.
They reported not knowing about their legal rights until they were imprisoned, and about not having the funds to hire a lawyer. With almost 82% of women falling in the menstruating age bracket, we must pay more attention to what is happening to the women stuck in the jails of India.
According to the National Model Prison Manual of India (2016), there should be at least one toilet per 10 prisoners. But, this is hardly the case in reality, with women in prison saying that many toilets don’t even have curtains, forget having one toilet for 10 people.
The prescribed amount of water for bathing and washing per inmate is 135 litres, but these conditions are not met. Some prisons tend to charge for pads: with around three pads for ₹10.
And, some prisons provide only a certain number of pads per month, regardless of the prisoners’ needs, so they had to resort to using old newspaper scraps, or pieces of old mattresses.
Menstrual Hygiene In Prison
Generally, only the male relatives come to visit prisoners, so they feel shy to ask them for money for menstrual products, as it is still a taboo topic in most of India.
Around 43% of the women said that even the female wardens showed a complete disregard with respect to handling menstrual hygiene problems, despite being menstruators themselves. They also said that 90% of the inmates themselves showed total disregard towards cleanliness.
Due to the lack of staff in all women prisons, prisoners have been forced to clean the toilets themselves.
Out of the 1,178 female medical officer positions, only 647 have been filled. Hence, the women in prisons didn’t feel comfortable asking questions about their genitals, or those related to their reproductive systems, to the male officers who are scheduled to visit them once a while, in case there is no permanent officer.
Abuse Is Rife In Indian Prisons
According to the National Crime Records Bureau, from 2006 to 2010, 39 rapes were reported in police and judicial custody, with rapes in judicial custody being significantly higher than rapes in police custody.
The keyword here is “reported”. We don’t actually know the total number of rapes that have taken place and gone unreported. Also, there have been 34 deaths, out of which five of them were deaths by suicide.
It is important to note disturbing incidents which cause female prisoners to take such drastic steps. For instance, women in Nagpur prisons were told to strip down to prove that they were menstruating in order to receive pads.
Also, because of overcrowding by 114.4% in most prisons, there are high chances of confrontation and many women have reported being abuse by prison officials.
Female Prisoners’ Needs Are Ignored
Women in prisons encounter high stress situations day in and day out. High levels of stress have been confirmed to have an adverse effect on one’s menstrual cycle, with many skipping their periods every now and then, or others whose periods have stopped for months together.
Women in prisons are given the same quantity of soap as men in prisons, but not the same quantity of food, even though India has the highest rate of anaemia in women.
Women are not provided with sufficient pads which increases the chances of leakage and staining, and yet, they are provided the same amount of soap as men, which is not enough to use for a whole month.
Even though the National Model Prison Manual says that women should be provided with adequate clothing based on the climatic conditions of the prison, most women reported that this provision was not met at all. This further exacerbates the lack of hygiene.
Female Prisoners Are Not Treated Like Humans
Their crime does not make them less human. They should be punished for their crime and not for being a woman. Even the pads, and protein-rich food like fruits and eggs, provided to women prisoners by NGOs were said to be stolen by prison officials.
Lack of food, hygiene and basic human rights—this is what is happening to the women in the prisons of India. And we… We are letting their mistreatment go unseen.
If you want to provide help in any form, be it volunteering work or donations, you can contact any of the several NGOs working across the nation like the India Vision Foundation and Chance for Change.
These organisations provide basic amenities and teach skills to prisoners. To find out which organisation does this in your state and how to contact them, click here for a comprehensive list of organisations working with correctional facilities and/or prisons.
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REFERENCES (for the statistics mentioned in the piece):