Push to Digitize Rikers Island Mail Based on Faulty Drug Tests
Since 2022, New York City’s Department of Correction (DOC) has warned that its Rikers Island jail complex was swamped with letters soaked in fentanyl and other contraband drugs. As a result, DOC officials called to follow the state and numerous other prison and jail systems across the country in replacing physical mail with copies printed from electronic scans by a contracted vendor. Even Mayor Eric Adams (D) got behind the push to ban jail mail.
But on November 20, 2024, the city Department of Investigation (DOI) reported that evidence of letters laced with fentanyl and other drugs had been vastly overstated. Why? The DOC was using and relying on test kits with a sky-high rate of false positive results—nearly 85%. “The field tests don’t support a concern that a high rate of fentanyl-laced objects are coming in from the mail,” declared DOI Commissioner Jocelyn Strauber.
The DOC switched to test kits manufactured by DetectaChem after the state Department of Corrections and Community Services (DOCCS) discovered a high rate of false-positives in tests made by former supplier Sirchie in 2020; as PLN reported, DOCCS revised 2,772 prisoner disciplinary records affected by the faulty tests. [See: PLN, Aug. 2024, p.18.] The DOC found the Sirchie tests had a 91% false-positive rate, even higher than those made by DetectaChem.
But the overblown claims of drug-laced letters by then had ramped up calls to digitize detainee mail—even as dozens of guards were arrested and charged with smuggling drugs into city lockups. Meanwhile, DOI said that Rikers Island officials dragged their feet in implementing many recommendations to better screen staffers for contraband.
Former DOC Commissioner Louis Molina famously flashed a child’s drawing of a reindeer that he said tested positive for fentanyl. That picture was among 71 pieces of mail retested by DOI for its most recent report, but it was not among 10 that actually tested positive for drugs. Warned Strauber: “To the extent policy determinations are based on flawed data, they ought to be reconsidered.”
Source: ABC News
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