The victims of the myth of “passive drug exposure”

IIn early August, 11 New York State correctional officers were on the scene of a medical emergency involving an inmate at Collins Correctional Facility. All 11 were reportedly “exposed to suspected fentanyl,” became “seriously ill,” received one or more doses of Narcan, were taken to a hospital, and recovered. The nurse who treated the patient did not appear to be similarly affected, presumably because passive fentanyl exposure is only contagious to police officers.

“[I]”It was by God's grace that no one lost their life, even though people on the ground reported that the situation was dire,” Sen. George Borello (R) wrote in an Aug. 15 letter to Gov. Kathy Hochul. “However, without the intervention of your administration, it is only a matter of time before a death occurs… Therefore, we urge you to take immediate action by replacing full-contact visits with no-contact visits.”

The letter, signed by five other MPs, mentions two similar incidents in which all the conscientious objectors involved were hospitalised. They have all since recovered.

In a supporting statement, the New York State Correctional Officers and Police Benevolent Association claimed that due to exposure to unknown substances, COs were “requiring hospitalization every other day to perform their duties.”

Passive exposure to fentanyl through skin contact or inhalation of airborne particles is a myth. There are media reports of police officers continually administering Narcan to themselves or each other, but that doesn't mean they were in danger. It means they administered Narcan.

The culture of custodians is to do this indiscriminately, without knowing how to properly administer Narcan or recognize an opioid overdose. In one of the other two incidents in New York, for example, officers were administered Narcan after they were allegedly near a prisoner who was “behaving irrationally,” which custodians often use to describe an overdose of synthetic cannabinoids. In an opioid overdose, the only type Narcan responds to, the person is, by definition, unresponsive.

On August 9, a mailroom supervisor at USP Atwater, a maximum-security Federal Bureau of Prisons facility in California, died in a local hospital after feeling ill earlier that day. The cause of death is still unknown and has not been linked to contact with smuggled drugs in the mailroom, but the media and the BOP itself have portrayed it that way. Visits to Atwater have been suspended.

In prisons and detention centers across the country, contact with the outside world is increasingly being replaced by virtual contact. Used books, all books, CDs, greeting cards and postcards, photographs, all mail except legal mail. And visits. All of this is achieved in the same way: taking a physical form of connection to the outside world, exploited, for example, by friends and family of prisoners to smuggle in dangerous synthetic drugs, and replacing it with a digital version offered by private providers for a small fee. Or simply taking it away.

Most of that campaign has focused on mail and “full-contact” visits, in which relatives sit around a table in a prison visiting room that resembles a cafeteria. They are allowed to hug for 10 seconds or kiss for five seconds and hold hands or hold their young children across the table. “Contactless” visits take place on the other side of a plexiglass screen.

The loss of mail and books has often coincided with the introduction of tablets or the prospect of future tablets, which inmates receive under contracts with industry giants such as Securus Technologies. The tablets do not allow for video visits – like Zoom, but with more bugs and many rules – but Securus also provides the kiosks for them. Songs, phone calls, emails, video messages, photos and video visits all require a fee, as does sending money.

The abolition of personal visits in some prisons and detention centres was linked to kickback systems in which private contractors ask correctional facilities to forgo full-contact or in-person visits. Securus even used to require prisons to forgo in-person visits in order to use its video visits. Today, it simply leaves the decision up to correctional facilities.

No one in state or federal custody has a legal right to visitation of any kind. The United Nations Standard Minimum Standards for the Treatment of Prisoners, better known as the Mandela Rules, state that someone cut off from the outside world is already punished by the loss of self-determination and so the system should not unnecessarily “exacerbate” the suffering inherent in such a situation. They establish a right to receive visits “in addition to” digital forms of contact. But prisons and detention centers are not legally required to do so.

Some states, such as California, Illinois and Massachusetts, have passed laws prohibiting prisons from replacing in-person visits with video visits. For the past five years, the New York State Senate has advanced a bill to protect in-person visits in state facilities. Each year, the legislative session ended without a vote on it.

In-person visits are already prevented in a variety of ways. Prisons are remote and require hours of commuting each way. Searches rely on scanners that have very limited ideas about what a “normal” human body looks like. The tension of not being allowed to smoke or vape all day, and often surrounded by guards who are also stressed about it. There are vending machines that sell bottles of milk for $5.

Securus has promoted its video visits as a convenient alternative to contactless visits, telling visitors that the 30-minute video sessions are “similar to traditional through-glass visits, except you drive to the prison and visit your incarcerated loved one through a touchscreen terminal in the correctional facility's visitation center. The advantage of onsite video is that you can schedule your visit in advance online.”

Securus, however, markets its post-digitization services to a different audience—the company promises that automation will “reduce labor costs” and “provide the opportunity to redeploy employees to other critical areas.” Private contractors have a financial interest in stoking fear about synthetic drugs, but they are not the only ones. Law enforcement agencies have an interest in it, too.

Every day, custodians face many of the same threats as the people in their care—they spend their shifts in the prison, too. But they exceed their breaking point and leave prison because they have the opportunity to do so. The fewer custodians that show up on a daily basis, the more violent the prison becomes. Prisons, and particularly detention centers, at the state and federal level, are suffering from severe staffing shortages that have worsened since the COVID-19 pandemic. Cutting prisoners off from their loved ones will not solve this.

For full-contact visits, staff must check visitors at security, supervise everyone in the visiting room, and conduct a body search of the person being visited. For non-contact visits, staff usually only need to check them in. For video visits, staff technically need to monitor the video feed, but actually no staff is required at all.

Top image via Federal Bureau of Prisons. First inset image via Connecticut State Department of Correction. Second inset image via Davis County Sheriff's Office.