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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