New guidelines on managing periods for female detainees are great – but in 2018, we shouldn’t need them

The horrific treatment menstruating female detainees have endured is ultimately symptomatic of the broader taboo surrounding periods

A watchdog reported many women were not even able to speak to a female police officer, and police were 'routinely ignoring' the needs of women who were menstruating (PA)

Much like sanitary wear itself, the stigma attached to, and taboo surrounding periods comes in all shapes and sizes. At the most banal end of the spectrum are awkward jokes about “that time of the month”, the expeditions to the toilet unnecessarily armed with a whole makeup case, or devious dashes with a tampon up the sleeve, despite it already being designed to look like a sweetie.

At the starkest end of the spectrum are the 42 per cent of American women found to have experienced period shaming, and the dozens of women and girls who have died in Nepal in recent years because of an ancient tradition that banishes menstruating women to outside huts.

All of the above demonstrates why the new guidelines for police treatment of female detainees on their periods, as proposed by the Home Office, are so welcome. In case it passed you by, ministers are consulting over how to make sure women in custody are treated with “dignity”.

Under government proposals, police forces will be required to ask female detainees at the earliest opportunity if they are likely to need sanitary products in custody. Police will also have to make detainees aware such items will be provided free, and ensure all such detainees can speak to a female member of staff, if requested.

While the proposed guidelines are most certainly a positive – let’s face it, you would have to be a tyrannical maniac, or maybe just a surly prison guard, to dispute women in custody should be entitled to the aforementioned – it is somewhat staggering that they are needed in 2018.

It is also imperative we look at what prompted the proposals to emerge. This year, the Independent Custody Visiting Association (ICVA) suggested police detention conditions could contravene human rights and equality laws. The watchdog – which monitors the treatment of detainees – said people are often held in police cells without access to hygienic sanitary protection or provisions for washing and changing.

The watchdog told of how one woman had her clothes removed and was dressed in a paper suit. In spite of being on her period, her underwear was removed and she was refused sanitary protection. “She was left in a state of vulnerability sufficient to cause concern for her wellbeing, bleeding in a paper suit, alone in a cell,” the ICVA said.

The organisation also found many women were not able to speak to a female police officer, and police were “routinely ignoring” the needs of menstruating women. Sherry Ralph, the organisation’s chief operating officer, said a senior officer described the sanitary products available as “woeful”, and said custody suites “typically only have one absorbency of tampon and towel available”. More than 85 years have passed since Dr Earle Haas patented the first modern tampon, and time obviously moves slowly in the British prison system.

It goes without saying offering women a basic level of dignity while they are on periods in custody is the very least that can be done. Just as toilet paper is essential for all prisoners, sanitary products are indispensable for menstruating detainees. In the same way that many women have zero choice about whether their womb lining sheds each month, if detained in custody, they obviously have no option to nip to the shops and buy sanitary products.

What’s more, being curled up in bed with period pains is grim enough, without having to do it within a cell with no hot water bottle or slab of chocolate in sight. It is also worth remembering that asking for a tampon can be embarrassing enough when it is from a colleague, let alone a male prison officer.

The horrific treatment female detainees on their periods have endured is ultimately symptomatic of the broader taboo surrounding periods. Women have long been conditioned to be ashamed of menstruating, from the first time they see a spot of blood in their knickers. Sanitary products in this country might be classed a “luxury, non-essential item” and taxed at 5 per cent – the average lifetime cost of sanitary products is estimated at £4,800 – but periods are in no way considered a luxury by women who use such items.

Instead, from a young age, girls are taught to manage periods as unobtrusively and discreetly as possible. From having to cart round sanitary products in my bag for a year before my period started – because of the tacit but widely established understanding it would have been too mortifying to ask a teacher for a pad – to the tampons in my bag burned by fellow pupils on a Bunsen burner during science classes, or stuck to desks, periods were a perennial source of shame for me in school days. And they still are in wider society.