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PANDEMIC SAW A STARTLING RISE IN DRUG USE AT THE WOMEN’S PRISON


By Brent McCall

Documents obtained through the Freedom of Information Act reveal a substantial increase in prisoners testing positive for illicit drugs at York Correctional Institution during the height of the Covid-19 pandemic. According to Connecticut Department of Corrections (CDOC) records, a total of 342 prisoners at York, Connecticut’s only prison for women, tested positive for drugs in 2020. That’s effectively double the number of prisoners who tested positive for drugs in the year prior to the pandemic. But the raw numbers don’t really tell the story.

Because as evidence mounted that illicit drug use was on the rise within the institution, prison officials’ response was to conduct fewer drug tests. Whereas there were 1054 drug tests administered at York in 2019, there were only 780 tests administered in 2020, a decline of 26%. Consequently, a look at the positivity rate is able to tell us much more about the scope of the problem.

The data indicates that in 2019 illicit drugs were detected in an average of 16.32% of prisoners tested at York. During 2020, that number jumped to 43.85% of the tested population. Take into account the reduction in testing, then, it’s clear that York’s positivity rate jumped by 169% during the pandemic.

The fundamental question this raises, of course, is how did such a significant amount of drugs get into a prison that was under enhanced restrictions due to Covid? Like the state itself, Connecticut’s prisons were basically shut down during 2020. Prisoners were not allowed visits, the few civilian volunteers involved in offender programs were prohibited from entering the institutions, and even the courts curtailed their daily business; conducting necessary hearings over Zoom and remanding far fewer offenders into CDOC custody. Yet the data indicates that the deeper we got into the pandemic the higher the percentage of prisoners testing positive for drugs at York became. Indeed, from July through December of 2020 the positivity rate never fell below 40%. And in three of those six months - August, October and November - it was well above 50%, with November being the worst, when 77.59% of the tested prisoners produced dirty urines.

Of course, beyond the question of how such significant amounts of drugs were able to be smuggled into a prison under Covid restrictions is the question; what has the CDOC done about it?

Unfortunately, we may never know the answer to either question. Because in our infinite wisdom we have not only granted prison officials the authority to investigate themselves, we readily allow them to do so in secret.

Brent McCall is the co-author of Down the Rabbit Hole: How the Culture of Corrections Encourages Crime. Questions or responses should be sent to rabbitholect@gmail.com

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