Rhode Island’s integrated prison-jail system holds an aging population, and the state’s publicly posted gynecological policy contains no express guidance on menopause symptoms, hormone therapy or education — leaving what care exists undocumented for the public.
A nationwide review published this morning by the Prison Policy Initiative — a Massachusetts-based research and advocacy organization that studies mass incarceration — found that menopause, a physiological transition every woman who lives long enough goes through, is almost entirely absent from the correctional policies that states, the District of Columbia and the Federal Bureau of Prisons make public. Of the 52 systems examined, documents from only 10 states mentioned menopause at all. Rhode Island is on that list, but not in the way state officials might want.
The analysis, written by PPI senior research analyst Emily Widra, sorted those 10 into two groups: five states — Alabama, Alaska, Mississippi, Oklahoma and Oregon — whose documents actually addressed menopause, and five others, Rhode Island among them, where the word surfaced only in passing, attached to some other subject. Even in the first group, PPI concluded, not one document described a comprehensive package of medical care, symptom management or education. The full review is posted on PPI’s site…