Thousands of California prisoners falsely tested positive for opioids. Did it cost them their freedom?
Faulty drug tests given to thousands of California prisoners gave false results for opiates
Prison advocates worry that the false positive results have tainted the parole decision for inmates.
Thousands of inmates wrongly tested positive for opiate use inside California state prisons last year because of a laboratory mistake, and civil rights attorneys now worry many of them could be denied parole and a chance at freedom because of it.
About 6,000 drug tests are believed to have generated false positive results in 2024, according to attorneys at UnCommon Law, a nonprofit advocacy group that represents inmates seeking parole. The organization confirmed the false test results through a series of public records requests, which showed positive test results suddenly spiked across California prisons between April and July last year.
The tests were done as part of inmates’ drug treatment programs and included in their medical records, but attorneys representing the prisoners said the test results were also included in inmates’ parole hearing records as a result, meaning hundreds or thousands of parole hearings could be unfairly swayed by incorrect test results.