MAYBE THAT’S what happened to Sherrad Barton, a 35-year-old social worker from Dorchester who counsels recovering substance abusers. Once a week, Barton visits her long-time friend Darrell, who is serving a life sentence for murder. During nearly every visit since February, Barton has watched one visitor after another succumb to anger, frustration, and even tears after a positive result from the Itemiser. Once, Barton observed a personal acquaintance — a veteran teacher and devout Muslim — test positive for heroin. The woman "has no tolerance for drugs," Barton says. "That she would test positive for heroin seemed ridiculous." Other times, she has seen elderly women, some with grandchildren in tow, flunk after the device detected substances such as amphetamines, PCP, and cocaine.
"I couldn’t help but think this machine is messed up,’" recalls Barton. "I have regular contact with substance abusers. I thought, ‘This is a scam, and my day is coming.’"
Barton’s suspicions turned out to be correct. On May 5, after spending a work day at a Quincy-based substance-abuse clinic, she arrived at SBCC for her routine visit — only to set off the Itemiser’s alarm. The guards staffing the machine told her that she had scanned positive for trace particles of amphetamines. They then informed her of the DOC policy regarding test results.
"I was livid," she says. She requested another test, but the guards refused. She asked for her results — again, the guards declined. After submitting to a search that yielded no illegal substances, Barton was allowed to pass. But she walked away from the experience determined to prove the Itemiser wrong.
Three days later, as soon as she could contact her own primary-care physician, she went to Massachusetts General Hospital, where she shelled out $458 for blood and urine analyses. Both came back negative for illegal drugs. On May 16 she sent a letter to SBCC superintendent Edward Ficco expressing her concerns about the Itemiser, and she enclosed her drug-free test results. Because of her daily exposure to substance abusers — to people who use and handle drugs — Barton started scrubbing her hands with soap and alcohol before entering SBCC. She even purchased a new pair of shoes for such occasions.
Despite her precautions, Barton flunked the Itemiser screening again on June 26 — this time, purportedly for cocaine. Seven days later, she failed the test for the third time after getting another positive hit for cocaine. The situation has made her realize how her clients must feel when they complain about a faulty drug-detection device. "I’m used to people saying they didn’t do anything; it’s the machine," she explains. "Now I’m saying it, and it’s humiliating."
Her humiliation is shared by scores of people who visit prisoners at SBCC. Soon after the Itemiser was installed last January, complaints about its accuracy began flowing into the Boston-based Massachusetts Correctional Legal Services (MCLS). MCLS attorney Jim Pingeon has taken affidavits from 50 visitors, including Barton. He says people from ministers to business owners to grandmothers claim the device produces erroneous results. "It would be one thing if a few people called," he says. "But dozens of people who don’t fit the [drug-smuggler] stereotype have complained."
In March, Pingeon filed Bouchard, et al. v. Ficco, et al. at Suffolk Superior Court on behalf of five women who, like Barton, have been denied visitation rights because of the Itemiser. They’re suing SBCC superintendent Ficco and DOC commissioner Michael Maloney for using "an unreliable electronic drug-detection device that falsely labels [plaintiffs] a drug user or smuggler." The DOC policy recognizes that a positive result does not prove a visitor is using or smuggling illegal drugs. But prison officials believe a positive result proves that a visitor has had direct contact with such drugs — a proposition they take very seriously. Yet Pingeon says the DOC is wrong to make that assumption. "Taking action based on the idea that a visitor [who tests positive] may be a security risk is too speculative," he says. The suit asks the court to find that use of the Itemiser violates DOC visitation regulations, the state Administrative Procedures Act, and the constitutional rights of prison visitors, and order the DOC to get rid of it.
The problem, Pingeon explains, is not simply that prison officials use the device, but that they allow a machine to serve as final arbiter. As a result, people who insist they have never intentionally touched an illicit substance — let alone tried to sneak such substances behind prison walls — have found themselves in a tough spot. The DOC policy leaves them with little chance to challenge the results. "This mysterious machine declares a positive, and people are denied entrance," he says. "A test that isn’t reliable is not a legitimate reason for denying people rights."
Pingeon is convinced that innocent people are suffering — people like Glacken, Barton, and Mary Ann Basile. Basile, 52, a Watertown administrative assistant, has a 29-year-old son, Salvatore, who is in prison for robbery. She has not returned to SBCC to visit him since she scanned positive for heroin and marijuana twice last April; she fears an indefinite prison ban if she tests positive a third time. "I don’t want to take the chance of not being able to see my son," says Basile, who suspects that the Itemiser is detecting the medication she gives her 10-year-old granddaughter for attention-deficit disorder. Basile misses her weekly encounters with her son — seeing him in the flesh, offering him a hug. "When I’m not mad about this," she says, "I’m sad. I feel at the mercy of this machine."
DOC spokesperson Justin Latini contends that the department does not hold positive results against visitors because "we don’t accuse people of illegal activity." He says the department doesn’t report those results to outside law-enforcement agencies. When asked whether stripping away visitation rights is fair treatment for people whose positive scans may be no fault of their own, he replies, "For a machine to err three times on the same person doesn’t seem likely."
Even Latini, though, seems aware that the machine can be set off by legal drugs; he admits the DOC keeps "a short list" of prescription drugs that can trigger positive readings, though he declines to identify them. According to Woodford, numerous medications — including nitroglycerin, diet aids, and asthma inhalers — can touch off the Itemiser because they contain amphetamines. Medicines for attention-deficit disorder — such as Adderall, which Basile gives her granddaughter — also consist of amphetamines. Latini maintains that those who take DOC-specified medications will not be denied prison access if they produce a doctor’s note. "Anyone else," he says, "can appeal to the commissioner.... There is opportunity to be heard."
Despite all the complaints, Latini insists the Itemiser is worth it. SBCC officials have never found illegal drugs on any of the 237 visitors who have tested positive with the Itemiser screening, he confirms. But he stresses that positive results have dropped in the past six months from eight percent in January to 5.3 percent today. When asked what’s responsible for the decline, he responds, "I don’t know. It could be people are staying away from drugs."
Or it could be that, like Barton, visitors have begun donning new shoes and scrubbing their hands clean before entering the prison.
