Thread by @keribla

I'd been in jail for 7 months when the guards stormed our cells one night after dinner, tearing our photos & letters from home & tossing them on the floor like they meant nothing. 

I’d been thru searches before but this was different. A THREAD & a column: themarshallproject.org/2021/10/14/the…

The guards crammed us all into a grimy holding cell with one toilet, and a metal shower stall caked in vomit. They left us there wondering for hours, then finally came back for strip searches. One at a time, we got naked and squatted and coughed and lifted our breasts.

Just when we thought it was over, one of them csme back and said they’d found powder in my cell, and it tested positive for opiates. I knew they were wrong, so I as BAFFLED.

But I was also terrified - I had no idea what that meant they’d do next.

A sergeant showed up to interrogate me, leaning across the interview room table, pointing his finger and shouting: “You brought drugs into my jail!”

He screamed and screamed and I told him he was wrong, and begged him to just drug test me. But he kept shouting, threatening solitary confinement and new charges.

When he finally stopped, the guards moved a few of us into a separate cellblock. Some of the other girls said they HAD been getting pills smuggled in, but that didn’t explain the powder in MY cell - and the other women all told the guards I had nothing to do w/it.

But the guards didn't care. They were convinced the powder they supposedly found in my cell was supposedly opiates.

For the next six days, they stormed in for shakedowns several times a day, confiscating more books and clothes and food every time. It seemed like there was nothing more to take.

They did middle-of-the-night interrogations, pulling us out of our cells at 2 am. They'd lock us out and say sleep on the floor, then lock us back in.

And there were so many strip searches we stopped wearing underwear because we knew we'd just have to take it right back off.

Then, someone claimed I was hiding drugs in my hair and they decided it was too messy to search - so they just cut it all off.

This is why I still have short hair, ten years later. When I got out I was afraid to grow it long, because it seemed like something they could take from me.

Then, they shipped us to another jail and put us in solitary. At first, they told the other jail I wasn’t in solitary because the others said I didn't do it.

But then when they drove away, they sent over paperwork saying I was in solitary too.

Now, they weren't there for me to argue with them or point out that the others said I didn't do it. I never got the required disciplinary hearing, so I never knew what I was officially in solitary for - a blatant violation of state minimum standards in NY.

A few days later, with no further explanation, they started shipping us back. I was suddenly not in solitary but too scared to poke much into details. Abruptly, jail life returned to normal.

For a long time afterward, I wondered what had really happened: How did that test of the powder supposedly found in my cell come back positive? It couldn’t have been a lab test, because that would have taken longer — so what type of test was it? Or did the guards make it all up?

I had no good theories until a few years later, when reporters began questioning the reliability of low-cost field tests, the roadside kits police officers use when they think they’ve found drugs in someone’s car.  propublica.org/article/unreli…

These are the same tests that make the news for weird wrongful arrests - like when they mistake donut glaze or motor oil for drugs. npr.org/sections/thetw…

A few years ago, @radleybalko did a great round-up of these -- which use those problematic field tests, like the ones in the PP article above. washingtonpost.com/news/the-watch…

These tests have generated so many wrongful convictions that some courts refuse to allow them as evidence.

Even so, many prison systems still rely on them to punish people for drugs they don’t have. documentcloud.org/documents/7276…

For example, as mentioned earlier, Texas uses them:

https://twitter.com/keribla/status/1448642880852086789?s=20

Heres a letter from a guy in Texas who got in trouble because TDCJ said decade-old letters from his dead grandmother had drugs on them.

This isn’t just a Texas problem, though. I got a similar letter from a guy in federal prison who spent five months in SHU when they said they found drugs on a letter from *the court* documentcloud.org/documents/2108…

Earlier this year, @cjciaramella did a great deep-dive into this problem in federal prisons reason.com/2021/06/13/the…

In New York, they stopped using these field tests - though a spokesman told me last week that they plan to start again as soon as they get a contrator for confirmatory lab testing.

Here's some background on NY from @georgejoseph94: gothamist.com/news/ny-state-…

And now, in Massachusetts, prisoners are suing because they keep getting put in solitary for accepting legal mail that then turns up "positive" for drugs. fingfx.thomsonreuters.com/gfx/legaldocs/…

“Everyone else gets a lawyer who can go to court and get it thrown out, but people in prison don’t get that due process,” their lawyer told me. “They just get thrown in solitary.”

Sounds familiar.

In fact, the test companies themselves warn that these results are supposed to be "presumptive" and can have false positives so they should be a flag for further testing and not a definitive result. sirchie.com/nark-reg-ii-ma…

As @RyanMarino explained, the problem isn't just one brand of test, it's the whole nature of how a lot of field tests are designed

And, as the prisoners' lawyers wrote: “When used to test for drugs sprayed on paper (such as legal mail), these tests are less accurate than witchcraft, phrenology, or simply picking a number out of a hat."

Ten years later, I still don't really know what happened when they "found" drugs in my cell. From everything I've learned since, a false + seems like a possibility. But the jail ignored my requests for comment - just like they so often ignored my requests & grievances 10 yrs ago