A year after New York prison guard strike, prison visits are still being limited

This story was published with the support of a grant from Columbia University’s Ira A. Lipman Center for Journalism and Civil and Human Rights, in conjunction with Arnold Ventures.

On a recent Saturday, Margaret woke at 5 a.m. to drive five hours to Franklin Correctional Facility in Upstate New York. She intended to visit a loved one, who she did not want to identify due to fear of retaliation, who had recently been transferred to the state prison after the nearby Bare Hill Correctional Facility closed.
 

Margaret, who is using a pseudonym, arrived just before 11 a.m., the same time she used to arrive at Bare Hill, where visits had been relatively smooth. But this time, almost immediately, she was told that she might not get in before the 2 p.m. cutoff for allowing in visitors.
 

Margaret waited for two hours, during which she said only 10 people were processed. A woman waiting with two children to get in was crying. A girl waiting to meet her father for the first time had been there since 9 a.m. and was getting increasingly nervous; she got in at about 1:45 p.m. “It was simply because they were so slow,” Margaret said.
 

Margaret eventually turned around and drove the five hours home.
 

The following weekend, determined not to miss her visit, Margaret booked a hotel near the prison and arrived at 6:30 a.m. the next morning. The trip cost her $300, instead of the $90 she would normally pay for just gas.
 

One year after the Feb. 17 wildcat strike by New York correction officers that paused visitation for almost a month, ongoing restrictions are still affecting families’ access to loved ones inside, according to dozens of family members who spoke with Prism. Most visits are still limited to one weekend day per incarcerated person, sparking alarm from families and advocates, who note that regular family visitation can reduce recidivism by as much as 26%, according to researchers. Visitors are now also required to pass through body scanners, in accordance with a demand from striking officers to reduce contraband, yielding multiple complaints from those who were turned away due to what they say were misinterpreted scans.
 

Long waits to visit
Before the 22-day strike, which cost over 2,000 officers their jobs and saw seven prisoners dead, maximum security facilities were open for visitations seven days a week. Now visits are on weekends, and rotate in accordance with last name or “Department Identification Number”, the identifier assigned to each incarcerated person while in the custody of the Department of Corrections and Community Supervision (DOCCS). Only the maximum security facilities—women’s prison Bedford Hills and men’s prisons Green Haven and Shawangunk—are open for visits on Wednesdays as well. The Family Reunion program, which allows prisoners to meet with partners, children, parents, and grandparents on the prison grounds is currently only available from Monday to Wednesday. The state hasn’t updated its visitation rules since Sept. 15.
 

Thomas Mailey, DOCCS’s director of public information, told Prism in an email that facilities will expand visitation days when staffing allows. New York Gov. Kathy Hochul recently extended the National Guard deployment at prisons, which cost $535 million. The state’s spending on posting the National Guard in prisons is set to exceed $1 billion.
 

The majority of prisons in New York are located in rural areas upstate and roughly 65% of incarcerated people who have been convicted of a crime in New York City are placed in a facility over 100 miles from the city. Families and loved ones who make the trip have to navigate long drives, financial resources, or taking time off work. Some New Yorkers without a car rely on private prison shuttle services that can cost between $100 and $160 per trip and can take eight hours one-way. As some facilities face overcrowding issues, many visitors arrive hours before visitation times start, as they fear not getting in.
 

“Our staff do hear about the growing level of frustration [with the] process, overcrowding, long waits, and shorter visits,” said Tanya Krupat, the vice president for policy and advocacy at Osborne Association, which serves incarcerated people and their families. She added that some of the 41 prisons in New York appear to do better than others.
 

Some have given up visiting entirely for now. “I don’t want to travel seven hours and get denied a visit,” said a 65-year-old woman, who did not want her name to be published due to fears of repercussions against her son who is incarcerated in Wende Correctional Facility. She hasn’t seen him in more than a year. “We’re hoping for the weekday visits to be opened up,” she said.
 

Katie Stewart, who is 47 and an assistant supervisor at the human services nonprofit Liberty Resources in Syracuse, doesn’t bring her children with her anymore to visit her husband. “Families are standing outside, freezing,” she said. During her last visit, Stewart arrived at 7:45 a.m. and didn’t get a visit until 12:30 p.m. “I was outside the entire time,” she said. Their children haven’t seen their father since the beginning of the strikes. “It’s too much.”
 

Body scanners spark complaints
On March 22, DOCCS updated its visitation policy with a “more robust security screening process” to “reduce the introduction of contraband,” following the striking officers’ demand to require every visitor to pass through body scanners. The move has prompted fresh complaints from those attempting to visit loved ones in prison.
 

Caroline Hansen and her 16-year-old daughter left their Long Island home at 4:30 a.m. to drive three hours to see her husband at Eastern Correctional Facility in Ulster County in October. Hansen had taken time off from her work as a waitress, which she does on weekends for extra income to supplement her work as the Long Island community leader at the Release Aging People in Prison campaign.
 

During processing, Hansen was asked to go through the body scanner as was her daughter, even though DOCCS policy states that “visitors under the age of 18 will NOT be scanned using the body image scanner.” Afterward, Hansen said officers told her to go into a back room where four male officers and a dog were waiting and told her the scan showed something in her abdomen.
 

DOCCS didn’t respond to a question about whether minors are being asked to pass the body scanner.
 

Hansen said she had her period and was wearing a tampon and pad. She asked for the captain, who allowed her to go back into the scanner after removing her tampon. They were offered a non-contact visit, which includes a physical partition. By that time, it was 2 p.m., and with only an hour left until visiting hours ended, Hansen decided to take her daughter, who was sobbing, home. Her daughter hasn’t visited her dad since.  
 

Several women have described similar experiences of being turned away after menstrual products showed up as anomalies on the body scanners, according to news reports.
 

Mailey, the DOCSS spokesperson, told Prism in an email that the department’s contract with the scanner vendor, Tek 84, required that the vendor provide training to all staff, including, for example, identifying the difference between contraband versus an air bubble. “As with all DOCCS policies and procedures, they are regularly reviewed for possible changes to improve efficiency,” the spokesperson said.
 

Tek 84 did not respond to Prism’s request for comment.
 

In December, the New York Civil Liberties Union (NYCLU) sent a letter to DOCCS saying that the body scanners amounted to sex discrimination. Megan Porter, an attorney at the NYCLU, estimated that at least 100 people are dealing with being suspended from visiting, long-term or indefinitely, or being turned away. Bernadette Rabuy, a senior policy counsel at the NYCLU, added in an interview that women trying to obtain an image of their scan in order to appeal a suspension have experienced difficulties with DOCCS either delaying or rejecting the Freedom of Information Law (FOIL) request. In at least one of the cases, the FOIL request for a body scan was rejected due to unspecified “security reasons,” which was overturned by the state Supreme Court.
 

Mailey told Prism in an email that “scanner procedures do not discriminate on the basis of gender. All individuals are subject to the same security protocols. Our policies are applied uniformly to ensure fairness while maintaining the highest standards of safety.”
 

State Sen. Julia Salazar told Amsterdam News that she received around 50 reports from New Yorkers about visitors getting denied over scans. Salazar introduced a bill in June that would ensure no correctional facilities could deny entry to visitors with menstrual products or contraceptive devices.
 

Last year, K9 units made 218 visitor arrests related to contraband. Between March and December, DOCCS turned away 2,557 of 142,491 visitors because of screening problems. So far, DOCCS has not provided data on how many of those also had contraband on them. “No one wants contraband to be coming in, but we don’t see it correlated with data,” said Krupat, from Osborne Association.
 

If a visitor is flagged by a body scanner, they are entitled to a non-contact visit, according to the NYCLU. However, James Bogin, a senior supervising attorney at Prisoners’ Legal Services of New York, said his organization has not heard from anyone who was offered a non-contact visit after being flagged.
 

Ongoing barriers
Prism also heard from dozens of women who said they experience inconsistencies during their visitations over the way they were dressed. One woman said she saw handwritten signs posted at the facility she was visiting announcing new dress restrictions: “no green, no white for women.” Such a rule is not included in DOCCS’s dress code.

During a recent reporting trip to Five Points Correctional Facility, Prism saw at least five people being sent back to change their clothing. None of them were wearing clothes that were an obvious violation of the DOCCS dress policy. Women regularly ask each other for advice in Facebook groups on what to wear or visitations policies at different prisons, to make sure that they get in.
 

Nicole March, the DOCCS assistant public information officer, told Prism in an email, “The handwritten sign referencing green and white clothing has been removed. All posted signage now aligns with the Department’s Directive and the visitor information available on our website.” The spokesperson also said that while some clothing is not expressly prohibited under department policy, visitors wearing certain attire may be denied entry if the attire is determined to be inappropriate under the dress code.
 

Others have continued to struggle with problems with the body scanners. Stephani Taylor, whose husband is incarcerated in Auburn Correctional Facility, said she had a stomach operation, where 80% of her stomach was removed and stapled. An officer told her to bring a doctor’s note to her prison visits.
 

“They honored my doctor’s note until Aug. 31,” Taylor said, before a sergeant turned her away because they had detected an abnormality in her lower abdomen. Taylor was not allowed a non-contact visit.
 

A few days later, her husband got a copy of a letter saying that Taylor was suspended “upon the grounds that a body scanner showed a foreign object.” DOCCS said in the letter that the abnormality was inconsistent with the medical explanation she provided. Taylor was suspended for six months until March 3.
 

“We’re almost at the finish line,” she said. “I tell you it’s been a test to our relationship.”

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