State Prisons Are Turning Away Visitors After Scanners Pick Up Their Tampons

Attorneys, advocates, and legislators say they have repeatedly heard stories like Kelder’s since earlier this year, when New York’s state prison agency started requiring most people to go through scanners before visits with their loved ones. The agency implemented the body scanning policy shortly after a three-week corrections officer strike in March, and advocates say they started hearing high numbers of complaints over the summer.

The scanner rollout was one of the striking officers’ demands, aimed at reducing cavity searches and alleviating what they described as high numbers of visitors smuggling drugs and other contraband into the facilities. (Officers themselves are a steady source of contraband, and most New York state prison guards refuse to go through body scanners.)

Visitors now must pass through body scanners in order to qualify for a full-contact visit in which they can sit at a table with their incarcerated loved one and touch them. The scanners use X-ray imaging to identify physical anomalies, including items under someone’s clothing and inside their body. Under the new body scanner policy — only published as an official directive in September — staff should deny visitors entry to a prison if they’re found with contraband or if they are “unable to clear the body scanner screening,” though it doesn’t define what it means to “clear” the scan.

Guards are turning visitors away after their body scans pick up “normal anatomy, medical conditions, and predictable artifacts,” said Michelle Bonet, an advocate who has been organizing prison families since the strike. That can include piercings like Kelder’s.

Menstrual or contraceptive products, like tampons and intrauterine devices, also get flagged, advocates and visitors told New York Focus. A vast majority of those flagged are women, the advocates have noted. This month, the New York Civil Liberties Union sent a letter to the state prison agency asserting that its body scanner practices amounted to sex discrimination.

“Protocols with respect to scanning and visitation do not appear to take into account that women menstruate, need to use menstrual products, and will frequently have tampons or other reproductive health care devices in their body cavities,” the letter said.

The Department of Corrections and Community Supervision (DOCCS), which runs the state prison system, did not answer questions about specific allegations regarding the body scanners, but instead sent a statement detailing its visitation and mail security policies. “Contraband, such as drugs and weapons, contribute to violence in prisons,” the statement said.

DOCCS ordered the scanners, made by the company Tek84, in December 2023, paying nearly $13 million for them. Tek84 declined a request for comment, stating that they do not comment on “customer operations.”

Before the March policy change, visitors had to pass through metal detectors and were often subjected to scent detection dogs, said Marc Cannan, a New York-based civil rights and criminal defense attorney. Those methods raised complaints about aggressive and invasive searches, he said, “but the body scan cases are much more frequent.”

The issue stems from guards’ interpretation of the scanner images, which varies from officer to officer, advocates and visitors said, and may explain why some, like Kelder, have gone through the machines without issue in the past.

The most common source of “false positives” — menstrual products, surgical scars, and gastrointestinal anomalies — “can create shadows or densities that inexperienced staff misinterpret,” said Bonet. “Across nearly all reports, the core issue is misinterpretation.”

James Bogin, senior supervising attorney at Prisoners’ Legal Services of New York, said his organization has been hearing from people — “always women” — who were denied visits on the basis of scans a few times a week. He said many of them get barred from visiting their loved ones — sometimes temporarily, sometimes indefinitely.

Most aren’t getting a chance to prove they’re not trying to smuggle things into the prison, advocates and visitors said. “The scanner is not proof of contraband, but they are treating it like proof of contraband,” said Cannan.

Those who do get a chance to plead their case report being forced to remove their menstrual products and endure “humiliating and dehumanizing” scrutiny, according to the NYCLU. In October, Caroline Hansen and her 16-year-old daughter drove three hours from their home on Long Island to visit Hansen’s husband at Eastern Correctional Facility. Hansen had gone through the body scanners before, she told New York Focus, but this time, she was using a tampon.

When Hansen got to the scanner, guards ran the machine several times, which was unusual, she said. Eventually, an officer had her step into a back room. When she opened the door, she found herself face-to-face with three male officers and a dog. “This is how horror movies start,” she remembered thinking.

The officers interrogated her, asking to search her and her car. They had the dog smell her several times, she said. Hansen offered to remove her tampon and go back through the machine. The officers searched the bathroom before and after she used it, but ultimately allowed her to remove the tampon and go back through the scanner.

By that point, Hansen said, she and her daughter were both “hysterical.” The experience was “dehumanizing,” she said. Prison officials then denied the pair their usual visit at a table, where they could touch and interact. Instead, they were downgraded to a no-contact visit, and had to speak to her husband through a pane of glass.

“Now, I just don’t go when I’m on my period,” Hansen said. “I don’t want to deal with that again.”

Hansen said she has seen other women go through similar experiences in the last several months. One person she saw in line at the prison told her that the staff turned her away because they saw her IUD in the scan. She had to return with a doctor’s note, she said.

State Senator Julia Salazar, who chairs the chamber’s correction committee, said that her office has received around 50 complaints in recent months from people across the state about DOCCS employees denying visits “ostensibly due to body scans.” In June, she introduced a bill that would prohibit jails and prisons from denying visitors entry or contact visits because they are menstruating or using contraceptive devices.

While Salazar believes it makes sense for prison staff to decide whether or not to grant a contact visit, their expertise as security professionals “can’t be used as an excuse to deny visitation arbitrarily,” she added.

Salazar’s office said that DOCCS has said that staff are properly trained on the scanners, but the senator’s staff hasn’t seen what that training entails. “From what we’ve seen, they do whatever they want,” Shafeeqa Kolia, a spokesperson for Salazar, said.

“Staff need to be trained and need to be sensitized to the fact that this is a clear discrimination issue,” said Ify Chikezie, staff attorney at the NYCLU.

Prison officials in other states have said that officers cannot visually distinguish a scan that indicates the presence of a tampon from one that indicates the presence of drugs, leading to guards being fired and women being denied visits.

In its statement, DOCCS did not respond to requests for data showing whether use of the scanners has reduced the amount of contraband entering prisons. The new policy doesn’t do much to cut down on contraband that staff bring into prisons: Employees are occasionally randomly screened, but have the right to request methods that don’t include a body scanner. Visitors can request that DOCCS exempt them from body scans if they have a medical condition that would be impacted by the radiation or other effects of the body scanners. During a public hearing held by the state legislature in May, DOCCS’s commissioner testified that approximately 80–90 percent of visitors willingly pass through the body scanners, while approximately 80–90 percent of staff refuse.

Sydney Umstead, a graduate student who contributed to this article, attempted to visit a pen pal she has who is incarcerated at Auburn prison in August. Prison officers said they saw something on her scan and that she wouldn’t be allowed to visit that day.

“It’s like a pass or fail system, and you failed,” an officer said.