CONTRABAND

Virginia Prisons to Ban Tampons for Female Visitors

Sanitary pads will be offered to women instead.

Women who visit inmates at Virginia state prisons will be barred from using tampons or menstrual cups as part of a new security measure aimed to help prevent contraband from being smuggled into the building. “If someone chooses to visit a Virginia Department of Corrections inmate, he or she cannot have anything hidden inside a body cavity,” said Department of Corrections spokeswoman Lisa Kinney. She added that women who visit will be offered pads “so the tampons don’t appear as possible contraband on a body scan.” Inmate-rights activists are furious about the move, saying it undermines privacy rights of visitors. “That’s such a violation,” said Jana White, a co-founder of the Virginia Coalition for the Fair Sentencing of Youth who makes regular visits to see an inmate at Sussex II State Prison in Waverly, Virginia. “I can’t understand why we, the loved ones, have to go through this.”