Tartan Spotlight: Professor Heidi Arnold helps pass Ohio House Bill 29

On March 20 Ohio House Bill 29 went into effect, guaranteeing access to hygiene products and hot showers for menstruating inmates in Ohio prisons. The bill was passed unanimously in the Ohio House and Senate in late 2025 and was signed into law by Gov. DeWine.

One of the people who was key in getting the bill was Heidi Arnold, a professor at Sinclair, who has worked with previously or currently incarcerated students and individuals and became involved in 2020.

“I’ve been working in the prison teaching, and so I knew a lot of women, and I knew a lot of stories. So that’s how I got connected in the first place,” Arnold said.

Arnold explained how she was contacted in 2020 by Kailyn Tiggs, an activist who was leading the charge on this issue and had reached out to several people in the Dayton area to learn more about people’s stories.

Serious work on getting the bill passed began in 2022, and the process was a very slow burn, with many procedures, steps and rules that took longer than expected, as well as the difficulty of explaining what was really going on to the representatives.

Professor Heidi Arnold. CONTRIBUTED

“A lot of the representatives had no idea that this was happening, or not happening,” Arnold said. “There are some facilities, some prisons and jails, that have policies about distributing menstrual hygiene products, but there was nothing that said that policy had to be followed.

“So that’s why we wanted to have a bill that would mandate that the policies would be followed. And of course, we had to alter our bill several times. We wanted all these things as it always is, and then you have to whittle down to the basics just to get it passed.”

Arnold explained that the basics included guaranteeing access to menstruation products and hot showers, while also noting that the issue isn’t that menstruation and other hygiene products aren’t present at these facilities, but that access to them for inmates is inconsistent.

“The products are there in the facility, but they are not widely distributed, and you have to ask for them. And this is just another one of those things that happens in a prison where [a correction] officer has power, and so they withhold to get what they want and to, you know, belittle people and humiliate people. There are some great correction officers, but there are also some not so great ones.”

Arnold also mentioned that some facilities are good about making sure hygiene products are free and accessible for everyone, while others are not and certain products are only available for sale in the commissary.

But she explained that in Ohio someone who has a job in prison is typically paid $15 to $20 a month. This means that accessing hygiene products can be extremely difficult for inmates who don’t have money being put onto their account by their family or friends.

Arnold explained why the bill is important to her and how it only scratches the surface of the root problem.

“I would say probably the priority is the fact that these are women that I know. They’re humans; they’re real people, and it’s really easy to lose sight of the fact that there’s all these women incarcerated that are [seen as] just a number,” Arnold said.

Arnold detailed how bills have two years to make it through the process, and their first attempt ended up timing out. It was not because they failed to do all the necessary steps or because they weren’t prepared, but because the people in charge of these processes weren’t pushing it forward.

**Heidi Arnold poses for a picture with other proponents of House Bill 29 at the Ohio Statehouse in Columbus**. CONTRIBUTED

She explained how after the bill timed out they had to start the whole process again from the first level, but the good news was that by then people knew them and so they were able to push through the earlier levels much faster than the first time.

Arnold described how she had recruited and worked with many formerly incarcerated women, most of them former Sinclair students, and helped them with testifying. She noted that she was proud of all of them and couldn’t pick out a single story or moment that was more moving than any other.

“I was tutoring them and helping them with their scripts. We finally met face to face, and we practiced our scripts. We actually had some local politicians and some representatives come and meet with us to hear our stories, to see how they would respond, and what kind of information we needed to alter or add. So we picked up a few people along the way over these four years of getting this done.” Arnold said.

Arnold said that for these women it took a lot of courage to testify, as well as a lot of restraint to remain civil and calm when talking about something so uncomfortable.

Despite the uphill battle Arnold noted that one unexpected factor was the complete absence of overt opposition. During the process of getting a bill passed opponents are typically provided the chance to raise objections or concerns, or to argue why the bill should not be passed. Most bills have at least some naysayers, but Arnold said it was a pleasant surprise that this bill was one of the rare exceptions.

“I think our opposition was really the representatives,” Arnold said. “Some of the people hearing it for the first time were like, well, this is going to cost money. And we were like no, the products are there…They just need unboxed, and they need to be released to people.

“For a long time, we had a hard time convincing them that that was true. And a lot of times the products are in the building, but they’re in a drawer, they’re in a locked closet, and the officers are not interested in getting up and getting them, or as I said they’re withholding them for whatever reason.”

Despite the representatives’ initial hesitancy, the bill passing unanimously indicates that Arnold and all the other women who testified and worked hard were successful in getting their message across. But Arnold made it clear that there is still a lot of work to be done.

Erik Larson, reporter

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