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Pa. prisons make changes to drug tests after complaints of ‘false positives’

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Pa. prisons make changes to drug tests after complaints of ‘false positives’

Kyle Mayer was looking forward to getting paroled from State Correctional Institution Frackville so he could spend the holidays with his family.

Then he tested positive for K2 and all his privileges, including parole, were yanked away.

Positive tests came back to other incarcerated people, who reported they were placed on cell restrictions, lost access to contacting the outside world and were locked down in their cells.

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But they said the tests were wrong.

The Pennsylvania Capitol in Harrisburg, where the Shapiro administration is proposing the closure of two state prisons, one in Centre County and the other in Clearfield County.
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The rash of complaints about false positive tests came as the Department of Corrections said they began testing for several forms of synthetic drugs that weren’t included in previous tests.

Amid the complaints about false positives and undue punishment, corrections officials said they are now changing some testing protocols.

PennLive began receiving numerous messages in October about people in state correctional institutions Frackville, Cambridge Springs and Muncy who were being punished for using drugs when they never actually used any illegal substances.

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The concerns focused around the use of K2, also known as spice or synthetic marijuana.

K2 is a man-made drug that is meant to provide the same psychoactive effects of marijuana and can come in liquid form that is sprayed on paper or other material.

Department of Corrections Spokesman Ryan Tarkowski told PennLive in late December that prison officials were aware of the complaints alleging false positive tests and were reviewing the matter.

He said Pharmatech Laboratories & Diagnostics, which conducts drug testing for the department, “recently began testing for several forms of synthetic drugs that were not tested previously.”

A little more than a week later, Tarkowski reached out to PennLive to explain the tests at the time were sensitive to the point where they could detect the presence of “virtually any level” of the synthetic drugs.

He explained that the DOC has worked with Pharmatech to increase the baseline level of the test, meaning more of the drug will have to be found in the test to be considered positive.

This is to reduce the chance of a positive test result coming from indirect contact with K2.

Mayer’s test result, for example, found the lowest detectable amount possible. He has since been released on parole.

“In reference to concerns about the positive test results from October and November, the Department will review these cases and will remove misconduct records when appropriate,” Tarkowski said in an email. “Additionally, we will not consider pending results until such time as the revised testing level is in place.”

Because of its portability, potency and ability to circumvent some traditional drug screenings, K2 has become a growing problem in jails and prisons.

In November and December 2023, officials at Dauphin County Prison stripped cells and left men in a restricted housing unit without lights and power for more than two weeks. Officials claimed the move was necessary to curb smoking of K2 that had become rampant in the jail.

The county is currently facing a federal class-action lawsuit alleging significant violations of rights because of the intentional power outage.

In 2018, the Department of Corrections stopped allowing mail from being sent directly to incarcerated people out of concerns of smuggling drugs.

Mail is now sent to a third-party company that scans the documents and uploads them to incarcerated people’s tablet computers.

The move initially correlated to reduction in the number of drugs being found in prisons, according to a 2023 investigation by PennLive.

However, by the end of 2022, the rate that drugs were being discovered in prisons had climbed back up to similar levels found before the mail policy went into place.

On top of that, the percentage of random drug screenings coming back positive nearly quadrupled, according to PennLive’s investigation.

First Published: January 30, 2025, 9:49 p.m.
Updated: January 30, 2025, 10:42 p.m.

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