Field Testing in Drug Arrests
Earlier this month, both The New York Times and The Marshall Project ran excellent stories on how a roadside field tests for drugs can return false positives that send innocent people to jail or even cause them to plead guilty when they did not possess drugs. The articles highlighted alarming uses of field tests in Florida and Texas, where people were charged, held for months, or even convicted based on field tests alone.
Chicago Appleseed has been involved in—and an advocate for—the Cook County Pilot Drug Field-Testing Program. We advocated for the program because, in Cook County, it was possible for someone to be held in jail on a drug charge for more than three weeks, even if the case was ultimately dismissed at preliminary hearing because the full drug analysis report from the Illinois State Police crime lab showed that no drugs were present.In 2010, for example, 5,000 people spent between three and four weeks in Cook County Jail only to have their drug cases dismissed at preliminary hearing.
Illinois has one of the longest statutory maximum times in the country for holding preliminary hearings. Nearly all other states require a preliminary hearing 10 or 14 days after arrest. Illinois permits a 30-day wait.
In order to reduce the number of people being held awaiting drug test results, Chicago Appleseed partnered with the Community Renewal Society to advocate for field-testing. Although false positives in the field remain a risk, field testing also allows some detainees to avoid arrest, which was not possible before the implementation of field testing. False positives from field testing kits create no new risk in Cook County, particularly because the case will not proceed without the full lab analysis, which is not true in the jurisdictions profiled in the Times and Marshall Project stories. Coupled with a renewed push to release people—pending the preliminary hearing—through money bond, I-bond (personal recognizance) or electronic monitoring, field testing in Cook County is resulting in fewer arrests.
Additionally, the Cook County Pilot uses the X-CAT testing devices, whereas the Marshall Project report specifically calls out the NARK II testing kit. The quarterly report from the Cook County Pilot, discussed on our blog here, shows a very high accuracy rate with the NARK II testing kit.
Drug policy, drug arrests and drug courts remain in need of major reform, both in Illinois specifically and in the United States generally. Improved kits and procedures for field-testing, as well as better pre-trial procedures and treatment for substance abuse, are part of the reform process. Through evaluation of Cook County’s Drug Field-Testing Pilot Program, Chicago Appleseed and our community partners will work to ensure field testing in Illinois has the intended decarcerating impact.