THE JOINT GOES TO POT
Weak Rikers drug test policy lets inmates get high & get by
MARIJUANA USE is rampant on Rikers Island, and consequences for lighting up are so rare that inmates are practically blowing smoke in the faces of their jailers, insiders say.
In fact, drug use is up across the board, yet detainees who refuse screenings face little or no punishment, according to correction officers and supervisors.
The number of times inmates refused to take a drug test skyrocketed 282%, from 288 in 2012 to 1,102 in 2016, records obtained from a Freedom of Information Law request show.
Sources said the numbers mean all the tough talk on jail discipline is nothing more than a smoke screen.
“You walk by the housing areas and you can smell it,” a veteran jail supervisor told the Daily News. “It has definitely become more common over the last few years.”
The overwhelming majority of failed drug tests — 1,276 cases — were for marijuana.
Toke-taking inmates used to get tossed in solitary for up to 90 days whenever they ducked or failed the urine tests administered by correction staffers.
Now, the inmates frequently get no more than a verbal reprimand for their first offense, multiple sources said.
Inmates with more than one offense can be thrown in solitary for up to seven days. But that rarely happens. “There are no consequences for bad behavior,” said Faisal Zoubi, who represents top jail bosses. The department’s paredback internal disciplinary system, he added, is “impotent” and has emboldened inmates.
Exhibit A is Rikers’ Enhanced Supervision Housing unit, where a troubled inmate, shackled to a table, puffed away on a joint — while a group of correction officers looked on, according to a report the city’s Board of Correction published last week.
The officers said their only option was to notify the tour commander, record the incident in a logbook or write an infraction.
They were reluctant to take away the joint from the inmate for fear it would lead to a use-offorce incident, the report said.
Officers are under massive pressure to reduce violence at the troubled jails.
As a punishment, correction officers can also limit the amount of food and other goodies inmates can purchase from the commissary. But that does little to deter inmates from getting high, jail sources said.
Medical clinicians say they are instructed to ignore the issue, one person said.
“They tell us, ‘It’s jail. Let them get high,’ ” the medical staffer said. “There’s nothing we can do.”
Department officials say that every inmate who fails or refuses a drug test is in violation. But jail brass was unable to list the total number or type of infractions generated by the blown drug tests, even though the Daily News first asked for that data in December.
Not every detainee has ducked the drug tests.
All told, there were 40,048 tests administered, with 1,463 positive results, records show.
The number of failed tests has largely remained steady over the past five years, the data show.
Overall, contraband finds rose 14% in 2016, from 760 in 2015 to 859 last year, said Correction Department spokesman Peter Thorne.
Department officials say they take drug use behind bars seriously.
The overwhelming majority of inmates who come into the system have some type of drug in their system, records show.
Detainees then have at least 30 days for the drugs to leave their system before they are punished for a positive test.
As for the solitary confinement, even the unions representing jail officers believe 90 days in isolation for a drug offense was too severe.
The use of solitary confinement has been drastically reduced under Correction Commissioner Joseph Ponte.
The number of inmates in solitary has dropped from 813 in 2013 to 103 as of last Wednesday, records show.
At the same time, the department has struggled to come up with a reasonable alternative punishment, jail officers said.