Toxicology Mentors Jail Safety
Martin Bean
Anyone who has ever worn a badge working in jail has asked an offender the same familiar question: “Are you taking your medication as prescribed by your doctor?” The universal answer is, “Yes, I am.” Often, the real answer might be “No. I am not.” As a career-minded law enforcement officer (LEO), have you ever wished for a standard pretrial, jail system, or probation urinalysis (UA) test result? Results telling you the secured medical data based on patented scientific testing for those sudden behavioral personality changes? Would modern-day scientific data provide a new level of empathy toward offenders or cast doubting shadows from those adept at getting attention for their pushback? An oppositional stance parallels the divided and dangerous trajectory of our national jail safety life. Can LEOs aim at this new moving target?
Community jail safety is multi-dimensional. It includes administrative staff, residents, resident cell housing to special residential housing units for its day-day operations. But community officials often evaluate efforts to develop this kind of safety using outdated data generated by the criminal legal system.
The criminal legal system generates a mass of information, much of it easily accessible to researchers. Programs that operate in tandem with jail systems are easier to evaluate and can attract more attention from policymakers. But given the narrow focus of criminal justice data on the risks of criminal behavior, with its one individual-at-a-time focus, its data can be a poor lens seeking to mentor safety inside jail system levels by collecting self-examined nuanced stories. A new paradigm seems needed in LEO culture: not just new methodologies and metrics, but more communication involvement in crafting and sharing this new, more behavioral collected data approach.
Approaches that give sheriffs and jail administrative staff a voice in evaluation design and summon the courage to act on their new designs and then summon the courage to act on information. This information data may lead to alternative thinking about correctional lives, experienced time, and law enforcement goals. Goals measuring transitional public-safety programs impacting local communities.
We might define new jail readiness as cognitive procedures that inclines an individual to accept, embrace, and adopt a particular plan to alter the status quo. Today local Department of Justice (DOJ) agencies foster collaboration among their staff and additionally with support systems and software. Each one powers up between pretrial, jail system, probation, and strategic parole pathways. This alignment allows a secured combined empathic balance to work seamlessly so administrative staffers can amplify a collaborative new punitive or alternative justice data profile.
Individuals using illegal drugs can never be sure of how strong or what is actually in them. Different batches of a drug may contain different amounts of the drug and other unidentified additives (fillers). Toxicology testing has evolved to a standardized 116-panel UA test that is operative and funded within Medicaid reimbursement guidelines. Jail facilities not operational with Medicaid beneficiaries benefit from the same price point as those that facilitate under Medicaid guidelines. Testing is a noteworthy standalone UA test with traditional LEOs UA cup intake procedure. It provides a single source of diagnosed scientific truth designed to streamline laboratory testing with its patient-secured data. American Jail readiness means no additional budget for this UA-lab-certified testing with comprehensive data results instead of the standard 5-14 toxicology overshadowed panel.
Urinalysis Toxicology (UA-TOX)
The UA-TOX moniker defines the toxicology mission of its full-service testing scope. The scientific-based state-of-the-art drug screening reporting framework improves patient outcomes. This UA-TOX facilitates the creation of a higher standard of behavioral health care in jails nationwide without increasing the cost of jail safety.
1. Medicaid funding pays the same dollar for minor UA laboratory drug testing as payee for the automatic UA tests for 116 analyses, 30 prescription medications, and a validity panel that detects synthetic urine.
2. Medication monitoring correlates to positive clinical outcomes; therefore, the courts can go beyond passing or failing offenders into actionable data analytics because it’s about the best science in providing professional medical care to establish and ensure accurate clinical outcomes.
3. The drug screening method can detect metabolites within the body across seven days with the highest confidence and accuracy. This accuracy eliminates the need for redundancy testing. Quality of care varies dramatically from rehab facility to rehab facility because of insufficient data and the lack of a standard of care.
4. We can share test result data in collaborating treatment, decreasing the need for excessive non-productive testing and possible punitive court decisions.
5. Has the client improved, or are they improving? (Data = Outcomes)
6. Again, are clients even taking their prescribed medications?
7. Are the medications present supposed to be present?
8. Why are clients taking multiple medications that conflict with their treatment?
9. Compliant only prescribed medication tested positive.
10. Non-Compliant prescribed medications are not present, medications not prescribed are present.
11. Not Present Prescribed medications are Not Present or Negative.
12. Self-Medicating medications present that are not prescribed or illegal.
Preventing Cross-Contamination
The offender expanded UA Tests using Liquid Chromatography Mass Spectrometry (LC-MS) test equipment greatly reduces the possibility of cross-contamination. Vacuum-sealed tubes contain the specimen. There is no cross-contamination or mess for the testing staff and no spillage during transport to their lab. Since a client agency usually ships together several urine tests, results can be affected by cross-contamination during transport. Traditionally labs may spend 6-8 hours manually transferring the urine into the test trays, often resulting in false positives. An alternative method implements barcode technology to label each specimen tube, speeding up preparing each sample for testing while reducing or eliminating the possibility of false positives because of human error.
Utilizing GPS Offender Monitoring
GPS manufacturing products pinpoint years of competitive experiences with its track record of linear end-to-end deployment accessories. Each claims seniority with a single or dual-device approach as their lead device for American public safety. A few accessory examples include robust Bluetooth and cell phone communication with facial recognition plus calling and texting abilities. A manufacturer’s handheld device also provides a virtual alcohol monitor matrix for alcohol breath testing as a dual approach to wearable monitors. Then there is the incorporated patch for a chemical read on the offender’s skin using that specific manufactured tracking device. Besides a tech component variation, the proficient monitor strap DNA wraps the probability of the wearable monitor remaining on the offender’s ankle. Straps vary from pliable rubber to hard plastic.
However, a unique manufacturer in Switzerland produces a lightweight, strapless circular monitor. It consists of hard plastic and titanium as its outer shield donut design with GPS offender monitor tracking. Advancing intelligence includes its worldwide virtual on/off interlocking procedure. Imagine an offender client overdosing, now on an EMT stretcher speeding under its ambulance flashing red lights. Its screaming siren bounced off tall buildings en route to a downtown Chicago hospital at two a.m. in the morning.
On arrival, the ER medical team wants the titanium monitor off now! They immediately telephone the monitor imprinted phone number answered in Upper Darby, Pennsylvania. The trained Pennsylvania operator requests the imprinted serial number and with just a few computer keystrokes, unlocks the device from the ankle in downtown Chicago!
This ever-changing post-Covid-19 law enforcement landscape of GPS offender monitoring pinpoints meaningful challenges. Before the pandemic, imperatives involving arrested and released offenders’ success equity sped up long-awaited modernization efforts within American bail requirements and jail institutions of all sizes. This public safety sensitivity debate and understanding may not wrap up taxpayers. However, there is cause for rehabilitation optimism with the innovative offender wearables. These offender monitors pinpoint data for an uncompromising behavior of offender-compliant commitment. Combined behavioral GPS engineering data and expanded toxicology lab testing data for sustainable DOJ analytic court data. This data summarization for its impending behavioral punitive or alternative decisions.
This once stand-alone GPS tracking is nothing new. GPS manufacturing firms have so-called innovative features. Some costly Research & Development (R & D) prodigies are no longer relevant in post-Covid-19 LEO compliance strategy. A couple of examples begin with:
1. Do you know of a LEO oversight who receives a lone report of an offender breathalyzer showing a non-compliant level of alcohol and responding physically in the middle of the night to that individual?
2. Successful reentry back into society is difficult. Do you know any customer who struggles with reentry life yet must recharge the body-worn GPS monitor daily for hours? Is this an example of a second chance in the transitional community?
Combining Offender Monitoring and UA-TOX
Combining GPS offender monitoring and the 116-panel UA test as the new standard allows for an uncompromising anti-recidivism culture commitment. Along with the behavioral GPS engineering, data, and meaningful analytics support for impending DOJ court decisions.
The DOJ defines Offender Monitoring as a case management hybrid method including, at least, address or employment verification, driver’s license or another document surrender, personal third-party custodian (not organizational), live conditions, and or a stay away from place condition not supervised by electronic location monitoring. Most monitored conditions have multiple verification conditions. The Sustainable GPS Offender Monitoring devices may notify the defendant of upcoming court dates, verify compliance with the requirement, and notify the court when it knows of any non-compliance, re-arrest, or new warrants.
GPS offender monitoring industry guidelines usually require a condition of use requiring a defendant to contact the Public Safety Assessment (PSA) office in person or by telephone if their agreed status should blur. Report as directed by PSA is the contact release condition that gives PSA valid flexibility in addressing the supervision needs before notifying the court. In preparing for this article, I interviewed former monitor offenders whose experiences seem to have mental reminders resembling pokes and jabs into their everyday concentration while wearing their monitor. Their physical side effects included harm to their health, including cramps, numbness because of impaired leg circulation, the discomfort of interrupted sleep, excessive heat from the short time charged battery, and swelling. Ronnie Inman, formerly incarcerated and currently serving probation in San Diego, California interviewed for this article’s full perspective, commented “I think offender monitoring really gives offenders an alternative way of thinking about who they are in a carceral world. A world where the most active daily thing is your mindset,” According to Inman, technology, and design comfortability are past due and welcomed in today’s GPS offender monitoring culture.
One GPS offender monitoring device cannot fit all files. Just as each adult profile and case differs, so should their monitoring device fitting. In a mutual anti-recidivism sense.
Eventually, it comes time for the offender’s job interview or appearance in court as scheduled. American taxpayers can prefer money bail, incarceration, or the enhancement of the GPS Offender Monitoring industry. Would additional GPS offender cognitive monitoring reminders reduce the failed national Failure to Appear (FTA) data?
Even with the dawn of higher education tools, how can anyone successfully discuss public safety, incarceration, or anti-recidivism issues in our society? The best-informed answer I can offer is that no one person actually can. American taxpayers are too varied, too complicated, and too contradictory to be captured by any public safety advocate voice. Toxicology, technology, academics, and correction leadership need to convene, connect the dots, and mentor during residential jail community time. LEO/Offender training focus might aim at who offenders are with a kaleidoscopic view while underwriting a clear picture of the offender’s second-chance aspirations once home.
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Martin Bean, Founder of Anti-Recidivism.Com combines Peer Support Coaching with Higher Education gateways for justice-involved adults during Pretrial, Incarceration, Parole, Probation, and Workforce Development Supervision. In 2023, carceral expansion includes its UA-TOX and its GPS Offender Monitoring Services. Its generative mindset facilitates secured data guidelines for the court’s punitive v. rehabilitative informed decisions. He attended St. Joseph’s University and is available via LinkedIn profile, his website, or martin.bean@anti-recidivism.com.