NY prisons used faulty drug test results to discipline thousands of incarcerated people

State corrections officials relied on faulty drug test results to wrongly discipline more than 2,000 incarcerated people in New York, state inspectors found.

The flawed drug testing program inside state prisons resulted in inmates being locked in solitary confinement and having family visitation suspended. Other bogus discipline linked to the false positive drug tests led to delays in parole eligibility.

As a result of the investigation, state officials expunged charges and modified guilty records for thousands of inmates, according to state Inspector General Lucy Lang. The state prison system also overhauled its drug testing program due to the probe that spanned unjust discipline cases from 2016 to 2020.

“Lack of integrity in the systems administered to New Yorkers behind bars implicates all of us,” Lang said in a statement.

“This investigation and the subsequent policy changes and record expungements represent one step closer to ensuring the level of integrity we should all expect and demand from the State.”

How NY wrongly disciplined inmates

As the opioid epidemic surged nationally and in New York’s prisons, state corrections officials used a drug test manufactured by Sirchie Finger Print Laboratories called NARK II from 2016 to 2020.

State officials picked the test due to its unique ability to identify hard-to-detect drugs, inspectors noted. But in August 2020, state Department of Corrections and Community Supervision officials notified the inspector general that the NARK II test had inconsistent instructions, potentially causing false-positive test results.

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Strikingly, the NARK II test was designed to serve as a presumptive test, producing preliminary results that require a laboratory confirmation, inspectors found. But while most other states using the kits took the added step of confirming test results with a lab, New York and one other unidentified state failed to follow that key recommendation.

State prison workers in New York also improperly used the drug tests, inspectors noted. They found:

• The test manufacturer provided “inconsistent, contradictory and/or incorrect instructions for use of its tests.” And it failed to identify this issue or advise New York prisons about revised or updated instructional documentation.

• Prison workers “failed to abide by proper protocols to prevent misidentifying contraband or cross-contamination of samples.”

• The prison system’s internal controls “failed to ensure that testers administering the NARK II test used the appropriate instructions and charts to determine results.”

Five days after learning of the test problems in 2020, state prisons in New York stopped disciplining inmates for the faulty drug test results at the advice of the inspector general. The subsequent investigation of the program revealed the massive scope of failures coming to light now.

What NY prisons are doing to fix faulty drug tests

The inspector general noted state prison officials promptly pursued fixes for the faulty drug test program once the investigation began in 2020.

By October 2021, the prison system contracted with an outside laboratory, NMS Labs, to provide the confirmatory testing. Since then, all presumptive positive results provided by NARK II tests have been lab-confirmed prior to disciplining inmates, inspectors noted.

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As for the prior bogus cases against inmates:

Of the 3,112 disciplinary records that contained a drug charge, officials reversed and expunged 704 disciplinary charges. That included 232 people who had been released.

The prisons also modified guilty charges in 2,068 disciplinary records.

Further, the state Board of Parole conducted new reviews for 271 incarcerated people using updated records that omitted drug violations associated with the faulty results.

What drug test company says about NY prisons

The drug test maker, Sirchie, conceded inspectors in New York uncovered some test kit instructions that were “sometimes ‘in error,’ could potentially cause false results, and required amending,” the report noted.

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Sirchie also did not dispute the existence of other test instruction discrepancies, but it asserted that “these instruction discrepancies would not affect the accuracy of the results,” the report added.

In October 2021, an incarcerated person and parolee in Massachusetts filed a lawsuit against Sirchie and Premier Biotech, claiming the NARK II tests are faulty and violated their constitutional rights, inspectors noted. The matter is still pending in federal court.

This article originally appeared on Rockland/Westchester Journal News: How faulty drug tests in NY led to inmates being wrongly disciplined