In 2022, former New York City Department of Corrections Commissioner Louis Molina testified before the city council about the flood of fentanyl coming into Rikers Island, the city’s infamous jail complex.
“How does fentanyl get into our jails?” he asked. “The short answer is that most of it enters in letters and packages laced with fentanyl, literally soaked in the drug, and mailed to people in custody.”
To illustrate the problem, Molina had a powerful prop: A child’s drawing of a reindeer that had been mailed to a Rikers Island inmate and tested positive for fentanyl. It was because of letters like this, Molina explained, that his department was proposing ending delivery of physical letters to jail inmates and instead sending them scanned and digitized copies.
There was only one problem: The field test used on that reindeer drawing wasn’t reliable, and a drug lab would later invalidate the results. Rudolph was clean.
In fact, a report released Wednesday by the New York City Department of Investigation (DOI) found that, when it sent 71 pieces of mail that tested presumptive positive for fentanyl to a drug lab for verification, 85 percent of the items came back negative, including the reindeer drawing.
The DOI concluded that “field tests are not reliable, particularly with respect to the identification of fentanyl in items such as books, clothing, greeting cards and other materials sent through the mail.”
The basis for the DOC’s proposed policy ending physical mail delivery to inmates was a falsehood, and not a particularly good one. The problems with these drug field tests are well known: They’ve resulted in hundreds of documented cases of wrongful arrests around the country, and several state prison systems, including New York’s, have suspended their use.
The test kits use instant color reactions to indicate the presence of certain compounds found in illegal drugs, but those same compounds are also found in dozens of known licit substances. Over the years, police officers have arrested and jailed innocent people after drug field kits returned presumptive positive results on bird poop, donut glaze, cotton candy, and sand from inside a stress ball.
A study published earlier this year by the Quattrone Center for the Fair Administration of Justice at the University of Pennsylvania estimated that these tests may result in up to 30,000 wrongful arrests a year.
The DOI says reliance on these field tests led officials to incorrectly focus on mail instead of other, more obvious, vectors for contraband.
Hellbound and Down 
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