#BREAKING: New Quattrone Center for the Fair Administration of Justice report finds error-prone field drug tests lead to the wrongful arrest of more than 30,000 Americans, each year, making it the largest known contributing factor of wrongful arrests and convictions in the United States, to date.
VIEW THE REPORT: https://lnkd.in/gP6SMWaj
"Guilty Until Proven Innocent: Field Drug Tests and Wrongful Convictions," is the first-ever comprehensive analysis of field test usage across US law enforcement agencies. The nationwide survey sheds light on the prevalence of color-based presumptive tests, despite known accuracy issues, and the alarming impact of these tests on wrongful convictions.
Annually, over 773,000 of the more than 1.5 million drug arrests conducted in the United States each year use color-based tests, despite their unreliability and accuracy issues associated with the tests. Our report estimates that around 30,000 innocent individuals are falsely arrested each year due to false positives.
The impact of these error-prone tests extends beyond wrongful arrests. Prosecutors often allow guilty pleas without verifying field tests, leading to a high rate of wrongful convictions.
The report exposes racial disparities, revealing Black individuals are THREE TIMES more likely to face false positives than their white counterparts in drug arrests. A concerning revelation demanding immediate attention.
“Presumptive field drug test kits are known to produce ‘false positive' errors and were never designed or intended to provide conclusive evidence of the presence of drugs,” says Ross Miller, Quattrone Center Assistant Director and lead author of the report. “But in our criminal legal system, where plea bargaining is the norm and actual fact-finding by trial is exceedingly rare, these error-prone tests have become de facto determinants of guilt in a substantial share of criminal cases in the United States and, as a result, a significant cause of wrongful convictions.”
To combat wrongful convictions, the report proposes crucial policy reforms. Recommendations include regular blind audits, cite-and-release policies, and mandatory confirmatory testing for guilty pleas.
“The relative volume of drug cases in criminal cases overall, combined with the widespread reliance on error-prone field testing in arrests, indicate that this is a significant and underexplored vector for wrongful convictions,” adds Quattrone Center Academic Director Paul Heaton. “Law enforcement, prosecutors, defense attorneys, and the public all want an accurate criminal adjudication process. Reforming how presumptive tests are used could advance this shared goal.”
Read the full report: https://lnkd.in/gP6SMWaj
