NY Prisons Are Barring Women From Visiting Their Loved Ones – Because They’re Using Tampons

Erica has been visiting her incarcerated husband for years. “Every weekend, faithfully. Rain, sleet, snow, whatever the weather was – as long as the visit was open, I was there,” she told the NYCLU. Erica never had any issues with the metal detectors and body-sniffing dogs that New York’s Department of Corrections and Community Supervision (DOCCS) previously used to scan visitors to its state prisons.

But then, to meet the demands of correction officers who staged a three-week wildcat strike in March, DOCCS began requiring visitors to pass through a body scanning machine for full-contact visits – where they can embrace their loved ones and sit with them at a table. While officers argued that scanning would reduce the number of body cavity searches they have to do, there is no evidence that this has happened in practice.

Erica didn’t have any issues with the body scanners – at first.

On August 15, just like every Friday, she finished her 12-hour overnight shift as a nurse, drove five and a half hours, and paid a hefty sum for a motel room to get a good night’s sleep. The next morning, she arrived at the prison at 6 a.m. to line up outside. Getting there later can mean hours of waiting, she said.

At 7 a.m., staff allowed her inside the building, and at 7:45 she was called back for scanning. Once Erica was standing in the machine, the officer operating it announced that she had something on her and demanded that she hand it over. Erica explained that she didn’t have anything. The officer begrudgingly agreed to re-scan her, but after forcing her into strange poses and cursing at her, insisted that she had contraband and refused to allow her to visit her husband.

Erica offered multiple ways to resolve the situation. She asked to speak with a supervising sergeant. She asked if she could look at her scan to see what the problem might be, and she offered to have a guard perform a body search on her. Officers denied each of these requests and told her she could return the following week. While crying in the parking lot, Erica encountered the woman who had been standing right behind her in line that morning. Officers had just denied her visit, too.

Days later, Erica’s husband received a letter informing him that his wife’s visitation privileges were suspended indefinitely. Subsequent communication from DOCCS to Erica specified that the scan revealed an “ovular object” in her pelvic region.

She was using a tampon that day.

Not Taking “No” For an Answer

A seasoned expert at dealing with the state’s criminal legal system, Erica filed a Freedom of Information Law request for her scan results. DOCCS denied it, claiming that producing the images of her own body would pose a security risk to the facility. She also appealed her visitation ban, and currently awaits this decision, knowing that the system moves slowly.

“It might be a year before I even hear back or get to see my husband,” she said.

Other women who shared their stories with the NYCLU recounted a similar series of events. Following their scans, officers told them they had “contraband” but refused to say what their scans allegedly detected, show them their scans, or allow them to be searched by a female officer to contest the scan’s results. In contradiction of DOCCS policy, prison officials did not offer the women a no-contact visit, instead blocking them from seeing their loved ones, often after travelling for hours. DOCCS then sent letters to the women informing them that they were banned from both contact and no-contact visits either for six months or indefinitely.

Other women reported that guards instructed them to remove their menstrual products during scanning and subjected them to the humiliation of bleeding through their clothes while waiting in long security lines.

DOCCS purchased the Tek84 scanners for $13 million in 2023 and began using them widely in March of 2025. The department’s Regulations state that visitors who refuse the scan can only have a no-contact visit, which involves a partition between them and their loved ones that prohibits touch.

Erica told the NYCLU that only a full-contact visit allows her to bring food for her husband. Otherwise, he isn’t fed from the time of their visit until guards return prisoners to their cells at 3 p.m.

While the vast majority of visitors consent to the scans, most corrections officers – themselves a source of contraband – do not consent to the scans but are still allowed to come to work, according to a DOCCS commissioner speaking at a public hearing in May.

It’s hard to watch officers breeze in past the scanners after she’s spent the morning standing outside in the cold, Erica said.

Poor treatment of visitors is a long-standing issue at state correctional facilities. DOCCS forces people to wait hours to see their loved ones, and previously subjected visitors to drug-sniffing dogs and invasive body cavity searches. The agency has also misused technology for decades. In 2007, the NYCLU called on DOCCS to suspend the use of ion scanners following reports of officers turning visitors away after the machines misidentified innocuous items as “contraband.” And in 2020, we filed a FOIL request for records regarding facial recognition technology – widely known to be racially biased – that DOCCS was using to turn away visitors.

Why Full-Contact Visits Matter

Visits are not some sort of perk or bonus. They are an essential component to incarcerated people’s care that they and their loved ones have a right to, and they make prisons, jails, and communities safer.

Research has found visits with family members reduce incarcerated people’s depressive symptoms and the likelihood that they will break prison rules. Receiving visits also correlates with easier re-entry into the community upon release, and reduced recidivism. Visits allow children with an incarcerated parent to maintain attachment during their separation, and in-person visits positively impact children’s emotional well-being as well as their behavior both at school and at home.

Unfortunately, the prison guards’ strike brought visits to a halt, and staffing shortages mean opportunities to see incarcerated loved ones remain at reduced levels.

The Family Reunion program, for example, which allows incarcerated people to visit spouses, children, parents and grandparents in a “private, home-like setting” – commonly known as a “trailer visit” – was suspended for months and is currently only available Mondays through Wednesdays, excluding anyone who can’t afford to miss work or needs to be at school. And DOCCS now limits regular visits to weekends at almost all facilities, leading to higher numbers of visitors on those days, longer wait times, and more tension and stress during interactions with guards.

This is the context in which officers are turning women away and revoking their visitation rights based on what they claim to see on the scans.

The few moments it takes an officer to decide that something in an image looks like contraband turns into months of painful separation for families.

“I’m my husband’s only support system,” Erica said. “I’m the only one that can visit him.”

Sex Discrimination, Pure and Simple

Scanner policies that erroneously exclude women from visiting on the basis of using menstrual products or contraceptive devices like IUDs make this a clear case of sex discrimination, which is illegal under the Equal Rights Amendment of the New York Constitution.

After receiving numerous reports from women who had been barred from visiting loved ones after body scans detected “contraband” in their bodies, the NYCLU sent a letter to DOCCS demanding that the agency comply with state law prohibiting sex discrimination by altering its scanning procedures to accommodate the basic fact that some visitors will be menstruating. We also demand that DOCCS immediately reinstate the visitation rights of Erica and all the other women the Department has unfairly barred from seeing their loved ones.

State Senator Julia Salazar, whose office has received some 50 complaints from women who have had their visitation rights revoked, has introduced a bill that would make it illegal for a state or local correctional facility to “deny entry to a visitor … due to the fact that such person is menstruating, wearing a menstrual product or has a contraceptive device.”

Full-contact visits offer incarcerated people a lifeline, and they also benefit their families and communities. DOCCS must revise its scanning procedures and training to comply with state law and immediately reinstate the visiting privileges of the women the Department has discriminated against so they can reunite with their loved ones.