(Content warning: reproductive health, medical neglect, menstruation)

Dear Mom,

Remember when I was in the 3rd grade, digging through your purse while we were waiting for a table at the Madison West Applebee’s? I pulled out a tampon, held it up in the air and loudly asked what it was. You quickly grabbed it out of my hand and in a hushed voice told me, “I’ll explain later.”

That was 1997. For something that personally affects about half our population at some point in their lives, we sure have an aversion to talking about periods. I wish I could say that in the nearly three decades since then, our attitudes towards reproductive health have made enough progress that no one would bat an eye at seeing a grown woman with a tampon in her purse. However, this is far from the case. But today, I’m talking about menstruation – a basic fact of life that, for various reasons, is barely acknowledged.

In order to get period supplies in Dane County Jail, inmates ask deputies during rounds. If they’re lucky and it’s not “really busy today,” they receive them. However, as is the case in the overwhelming majority of law enforcement agencies, the Dane County Sheriff’s Office is predominantly staffed by males.. The standard tampon disbursement is two.

The reality is that DCJ inmates can consider themselves fortunate to have free “access” to pads and tampons at all. Should that cease, a single pad or tampon from the commissary is 50 cents each. Many jails and prisons in Wisconsin already require inmates purchase all of their own sanitary products. 

But Mom, I’m about to tell you something I found absolutely jawdropping. Get this: in Dane County Jail, you are not permitted to take birth control pills. If you have a valid, current prescription, for any reason, it is denied. If you request to begin taking them, it will be denied. 

Wellpath LLC (subject in Chapter 11 federal bankruptcy) is a private, contracted medical company that exists solely in jails and prisons. DCJ is one of those jails. They replaced Correct Care Solutions in title, which ultimately all fell under control of the same private equity firm, HIG.

In a Wellpath jail, per their policy, healthcare providers do not provide birth control. There is no alternative reproductive health option provided within the jail. The sole option is the loss of bodily autonomy in reproductive decisions and ongoing care. 

It gets worse from there. Anyone, regardless of gender, who enters DCJ with a sexually transmitted infection faces obstacles to basic treatment. Testing is available upon request, for a $5 co-pay. In jail, $5 represents 20 minutes on the phone, a bottle of shampoo, or a stick of deodorant. 

Should inmates test positive for any STI that is easily and effectively treated with medication (i.e. antibiotics), they will receive that medication while in jail, but will not be released with enough to complete the full course of treatment (inmates are not released with any medication – another barrier to reentry into the community).

As a society, when we decide the best treatment for crime is incarceration, but neglect to acknowledge or understand what “incarceration” actually means in practice, we get outcomes that are opposite of intention. We get “discount medical” through predatory companies such as Wellpath LLC on a whopping $7 million Dane County contract (the only discount really being the staff discounting necessary care patients’ symptoms). We get unwanted or unplanned pregnancy following a DCJ stay due to even brief lapses in birth control administration. We get untreated or increasingly antibiotic-resistant sexually transmitted infections. At its core, we get such a lack of respect for reproductive health that while in DCJ, female inmates must ask a uniformed cop for a couple tampons while locked in a cage. 

Those are the concrete biological outcomes of modern incarceration. Psychologically, it’s outright dehumanizing. These outcomes are so far removed from anyone’s idea of “punishment” that I would argue they should be considered negligent and indifferent. Committing a crime has a prescribed outcome of potentially being incarcerated. Not trapped in a jail cell with blood dripping down your leg, or losing your own reproductive autonomy. 

Mom, after Applebee’s, you sat in my Fitchburg bedroom and explained tampons, menstruation, and puberty to me. It was a quiet, somber, and uncomfortable conversation. We shouldn’t have felt that way back in 1997, and yet in 2025 Dane County Jail, every request for basic reproductive health necessities and care is uncomfortable, expensive, and inaccessible.

Love,

Eli