NEW YORK (AP) Louis Molina, the commissioner of jails in New York City, warned Congress in 2022 that fentanyl was flooding into Rikers Island via the mail, causing an overdose epidemic among the inmates and endangering the safety of the guards.
Molina distributed a child’s painting of a reindeer, one of hundreds of confiscated objects that he claimed had been literally saturated in the drug and sent to detainees, as proof of the sneaky menace.
However, a report issued by the city’s Department of Investigation on Wednesday revealed that the assertion was founded on flawed drug-testing kits that had an astounding 85% false positive rate. The city greatly exaggerated the frequency of fentanyl being mailed to prisoners, according to the investigation.
Only 10 of the 71 pieces of mail that had been first identified by field testing as having fentanyl actually contained traces of the drug when investigators retested them. Molina pointed out that the illustration of a reindeer was devoid of fentanyl.
Field testing showing that fentanyl-laced mail was flooding Rikers Island sparked an administration drive led by Mayor Eric Adams to prevent physical mail from reaching inmates.
Redirecting mail to an off-site vendor, who would then upload it digitally for the inmate to read on a tablet, was the alternative suggested by municipal authorities. This approach is employed in other correctional systems, such as the state prisons in New York. A jail supervision board has so far blocked the plan.
The Department of Investigation’s commissioner, Jocelyn Strauber, stated that in light of the report’s conclusions, the city ought to reconsider its current endeavor to prevent detainees from getting letters.
She told The Associated Press that the field tests do not support a worry that a large number of items laced with fentanyl are arriving through the mail. Policy decisions should be reexamined to the degree that they are founded on faulty data.
Advocates for detainees have long said that staff members are the main source of drugs into the jail system, where they can simply smuggle them in and sell them to gang leaders. Dozens of correctional staff have been implicated in several investigations into smuggling gangs on Rikers Island in recent years.
The Department of Investigation stated in its report that many of its earlier suggestions for screening employees for contraband had not been followed by prison officials.
A spokesman for the Department of Correction stated in an email statement that the organization would examine the report and keep improving its testing procedures. According to the statement, field testing are a valuable tool for promptly evaluating possible risks and, despite their shortcomings, are a crucial part of our safety procedures.
These field tests, which enable law enforcement officers to avoid the drawn-out lab process to ascertain whether an item includes narcotics, have become more and more popular in recent years in tandem with a surge in opioid overdose deaths across the country.
However, the efficacy of the strips has long been questioned by specialists. Manufacturers must state on their packaging that results are preliminary until verified by a laboratory, as required by federal rules. This is rarely the case in correctional settings.
In November of last year, it was discovered that over 2,000 inmates in New York’s state prison system had been wrongfully incarcerated as a result of false positives from drug tests produced by Sirchie Finger Print Laboratories.
For many years, Sirchie also supplied the test strips used on Rikers Island, the city’s correctional system. However, in April of last year, the Department of Correction shifted to DetectaChem kits due to concerns regarding the tests’ dependability.
According to the Department of Investigation’s analysis, Sirchie’s test strips were incorrect 91% of the time, while DetectaChem’s had a 79% false positive rate.
Sirchie did not respond to inquiries.
Although DetectaChem is currently analyzing the study, Travis Kisner, the company’s chief operating officer, stated: “We stand behind our product.”
The Associated Press, 2024. All rights reserved. All rights reserved. It is prohibited to publish, broadcast, rewrite, or redistribute this content without authorization.
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