Prison inmates throughout Iowa will benefit from the conclusion of a protracted dispute about unreliable drug tests at the Iowa Correctional Institute for Women in Mitchellville.
The case illustrates how easy it can be to resort to presuming the worst and, in the process, deprive them of fairness and justice. It’s also a case study in good, dogged work by watchdogs both inside and outside the government. The Iowa Department of Corrections and state attorneys fought for years to uphold the unfair discipline. But, in a settlement that was approved in recent weeks, the state correctly walks away from several troubling practices, securing a better situation for all current and future inmates. Assessing prison policy for fairness shouldn’t stop there.
What will change because of the settlement?
Prison officials are always concerned about the possibility of drugs being smuggled inside. Synthetic forms of marijuana have been of particular worry the past few years. This case grew from three unrelated positive tests at the Mitchellville prison.
Each woman was subject to discipline such as solitary confinement for failing an immunoassay drug test. They also lost good-behavior time, permission to attend college classes, and jobs with Iowa Prison Industries. They argued that the test results were wrong and that prison officials knew their prescribed medication could have produced the result.
These particular drug tests are, in fact, known for having a high rate of false positives — almost half of all positive results. The best practice is to use the tests to screen, then follow up with laboratory confirmation for people who tested positive.
That wasn’t happening in Mitchellville. Worse, each woman’s internal appeal ran up against a department policy that disciplinary findings should be upheld as long as there was “some evidence” to support them. As the ACLU argued, that could mean affirming discipline even if most of the evidence did not support it.
Each woman filed a handwritten application for help from the judicial system. An ACLU attorney said the staff was aware of issues with drug tests and had been looking for an effective way to challenge them; these cases provided that. Attorneys for Iowa asked judges repeatedly to resolve the cases on procedural grounds, arguing that inmates have fewer rights in prison discipline cases than litigants generally do in civil cases. They asked the Iowa Supreme Court to intervene after one adverse ruling; justices declined the invitation.
After a string of orders that produced a more promising outlook for the women, the parties negotiated a settlement to restore what the women lost in the disciplinary process and, more importantly, alter state policy. From now on, Iowa will:
Officials must fight the inclination to dismiss complaints from prisoners
The women’s complaints were not novel. But Iowa’s state ombudsman’s office and the ACLU are some of the only entities with meaningful resources to look into this sort of problem in prisons in a systemic way, since public defenders are usually overburdened. The ombudsman’s office flagged the false positives as a problem in its 2022 annual report — and the office has criticized the “some evidence” standard for discipline adjudications as far back as 2015. In that report, the ombudsman noted a 2005 Minnesota Supreme Court opinion that “the ‘some evidence’ standard sends the message to prison inmates as well as society at large that once an individual is convicted of a crime, he is presumed guilty of every subsequent allegation.”
To be fair, it is easy with the benefit of hindsight to cherry-pick this occurrence where inmates’ complaints were wholly justified. Correctional officers, wardens, administrative law judges and district judges surely handle an avalanche of disciplinary cases where the inmates’ denials lack even the slightest credibility. It also, of course, can be difficult to muster sympathy for inmates. Each woman involved in this settlement is serving a long sentence for first-degree murder or first-degree robbery.
But all of that simply underlines how important it is that corrections officials and their watchdogs are vigilant. Prison procedures should also be crafted so that inmates know it is never futile to speak up about problems.
“Even if it took time to get there, the Department (of Corrections) ultimately gets enormous credit for being willing to dig in and fix what had become a significantly unreliable, unfair, and needlessly harmful (and expensive) disciplinary system and for recognizing that change was in order,” ACLU attorney Rita Bettis Austen said in an emailed statement.
This settlement is indeed a big step. It’s hard to say what other measures might be good for the department to consider, because the state considers many prison policy documents confidential. A department spokesperson did not respond to a Register request for comment.
“All inmates must follow the rules in prison,” said Thomas Story, a senior ACLU attorney, in a written statement. “But no matter what crime someone is convicted of, all inmates retain certain constitutional rights.”
Iowa should be conscientious and proactive about upholding those rights.
Lucas Grundmeier, on behalf of the Register’s editorial board
This editorial is the opinion of the Des Moines Register’s editorial board: Rachel Stassen-Berger, executive editor; Lucas Grundmeier, opinion editor; and Richard Doak and Rox Laird, editorial board members.
This article originally appeared on Des Moines Register: Vigilance to protect inmates’ rights is a win for all Iowans | Opinion
Reporting by The Register’s editorial, Des Moines Register / Des Moines Register
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