In 2022, former New York Metropolis Division of Corrections Commissioner Louis Molina testified earlier than town council in regards to the flood of fentanyl coming into Rikers Island, town’s notorious jail complicated.
“How does fentanyl get into our jails?” he asked. “The brief reply is that the majority of it enters in letters and packages laced with fentanyl, actually soaked within the drug, and mailed to individuals in custody.”
As an instance the issue, Molina had a strong prop: A toddler’s drawing of a reindeer that had been mailed to a Rikers Island inmate and examined constructive for fentanyl. It was due to letters like this, Molina defined, that his division was proposing ending delivery of physical letters to jail inmates and as an alternative sending them scanned and digitized copies.
There was just one downside: The sector take a look at used on that reindeer drawing wasn’t dependable, and a drug lab would later invalidate the outcomes. Rudolph was clear.
Actually, a report launched Wednesday by the New York Metropolis Division of Investigation (DOI) discovered that, when it despatched 71 items of mail that examined presumptive constructive for fentanyl to a drug lab for verification, 85 p.c of the objects got here again damaging, together with the reindeer drawing.
The DOI concluded that “discipline assessments should not dependable, notably with respect to the identification of fentanyl in objects similar to books, clothes, greeting playing cards and different supplies despatched by way of the mail.”
The premise for the DOC’s proposed policy ending bodily mail supply to inmates was a falsehood, and never a very good one. The issues with these drug discipline assessments are well-known: They’ve resulted in tons of of documented circumstances of wrongful arrests across the nation, and a number of other state jail programs, together with New York’s, have suspended their use.
The take a look at kits use on the spot colour reactions to point the presence of sure compounds present in unlawful medicine, however those self same compounds are additionally present in dozens of identified licit substances. Through the years, law enforcement officials have arrested and jailed harmless individuals after drug discipline kits returned presumptive constructive outcomes on bird poop, donut glaze, cotton sweet, and sand from inside a stress ball.
A examine printed earlier this 12 months by the Quattrone Heart for the Truthful Administration of Justice on the College of Pennsylvania estimated that these assessments might end in as much as 30,000 wrongful arrests a 12 months.
The DOI says reliance on these discipline assessments led officers to incorrectly concentrate on mail as an alternative of different, extra apparent, vectors for contraband.
“DOI’s investigations have proven that contraband enters DOC amenities by way of means together with DOC employees, and that DOC has failed to totally implement DOI’s prior suggestions, notably these supposed to strengthen controls round employees contraband smuggling and thereby to restrict vulnerabilities on this space,” the report says.
The New York Metropolis Division of Corrections didn’t have a right away touch upon whether or not it’ll proceed to make use of the sphere kits and digitized mail, however in an announcement, it mentioned: “Subject assessments are a software used to shortly assess potential threats, and whereas not good, they play an vital function in our security protocols. We are going to evaluate the report and proceed to refine our testing processes to make sure the very best normal of security for all concerned.”
However prisons and jails do not use these discipline assessments as a primary step in figuring out potential medicine; they’re usually the one step. Because the DOI report notes, discipline assessments “should not topic to confirmatory laboratory testing as a routine matter.”
The Supreme Courtroom dominated that prisoners don’t have any constitutional proper to demand that drug assessments be despatched to outdoors labs for verification, and prisons are free to punish them primarily based on the outcomes. Motive reported on how federal inmates are subjected to solitary confinement and different self-discipline primarily based on unverified discipline assessments, even if the producers warn that the outcomes are preliminary.
In 2020, the New York state jail system suspended the usage of drug take a look at kits manufactured by the corporate Sirchie due to issues over their reliability. An investigation later revealed that 2,000 state prisoners had been wrongly punished with solitary confinement, canceled parole hearings, and lack of visitation rights due to discipline assessments that had been later invalidated by drug labs.
And in 2021, a Massachusetts decide ordered the state jail system to cease utilizing Sirchie’s take a look at kits for artificial cannabinoids, writing that they had been “extremely unreliable” and “solely marginally higher than a coin-flip.” The injunction was in response to a class motion lawsuit filed after a dozen Massachusetts attorneys mentioned they had been falsely accused of sending medicine to their incarcerated purchasers, who had been then put in solitary confinement for receiving legit authorized mail.
One other class motion lawsuit was filed towards Washington’s state jail system final 12 months for punishing inmates primarily based on the outcomes of unverified discipline assessments.
New York Metropolis’s Rikers Island additionally used take a look at kits manufactured by Sirchie, however it switched to a different model, DetectaChem, final 12 months.
The issue has nothing to do with the model, although. It is that the assessments don’t give the consumer conclusive outcomes in regards to the presence of medication within the first place. In 2018, a California decide famous that one colour take a look at recognized chocolate as presumptive constructive for heroin, and if one accepted the logic that the take a look at may establish heroin, “it might even be true that it’s a presumptive constructive take a look at for chocolate.”
Sirchie notes the clear warnings on its website: “ALL TEST RESULTS MUST BE CONFIRMED BY AN APPROVED ANALYTICAL LABORATORY! The outcomes of this take a look at are merely presumptive. NARK® solely assessments for the potential presence of sure chemical compounds. Reactions might happen with, and such compounds could be present in, each authorized and unlawful merchandise.”
Molina testified in 2022 that “books are for studying, not for lacing with fentanyl,” and he was maybe extra right than he realized.
