BioTechScreening Blog

Welcome To the BioTechScreening Blog

Sunday, August 26, 2012

On-Site Device History and Why They Dominate the Criminal Justice System

Image courtesy of http://www.jeanlambertmep.org.uk

ONSITE DEVICE HISTORY AND WHY THEY DOMINATE THE CRIMINAL JUSTICE SYSTEM
BACKDROP: These devices have been around since the mid-nineties and their accuracy and reliability have increased quantum leaps so that today they are as accurate as laboratory screening. Why have immediate results triumphed over delayed result testing?

COST SAVING,
1. The initial savings is substantial with onsite screening generally costing less than half that of a laboratory screen with similar accuracy. The shipping cost of sending a specimen to the lab will always militate against it being a cost effective alternative.
2. Onsite devices yield a high percentage of admissions. When admissions obviate the need for confirmations, dramatic savings are realized in that confirmatory testing will always be the most expensive part of any testing process.

SUPERIOR PROCESS
1. With a delayed result, when the officer hears back from the lab he/she must either track down and confront the individual at which time an admission is highly unlikely
2. Additionally when a couple of days have lapsed before usage is detected, a potentially hazardous situation arises in that drug supporting criminal behavior may continue.
3. With an immediate result is negative, the officer can reward and support the donors sobriety, the positive role of drug testing.
4. When results are delayed, the deterrent effect of drug testing is diminished or non-existent.

LABOR INTENSIVE
With a lab screen a specimen must be collected, sealed, bagged a Chain-of-custody completed, shipped and then reported out when the results are returned. With a onsite device in the majority of cases the process in done in a very few minutes.

OFFICER SAFETY
When I met with the assistant warden at Sheridan in Oregon he listened to my pitch before saying all the features that I was promoting were well and fine, but he was only interested in the safety of his officers and the sooner he could identify an active drug user and segregate him from the population the better for all concerned.

COMMUNITY PROTECTION
With delayed results an offender can continue their drug supporting criminal activities until they are held accountable. Immediate results, therefore, afford a far higher degree of community protection.

DETERRENCE
In order for deterrence to be effective, consequences must be swift and certain. Long term addicts have told us that they must know that they will have to pay the piper at the time of the test or else they’ll convince themselves that the drug will degrade in the delay while sending it to a laboratory or that it will be lost or mixed-up with another’s specimen. Deterrence is the main goal that most effective programs seek to achieve.

FLEXIBILITY AND KEEPING DONORS GUESSING
In order to be effective, a process must keep offenders “guessing.” When panels are not changed they become predictable and donors will find drugs they can use that are “safe” from detection. Onsite tests enable you to frequently change panels so that a donor does not know on a given day for what they will be tested. It also enables you to customize panels per geographic areas to test only for those drugs being used in a given location.

Labels: justice, laboratory, matrix, testing

by: BioTechScreening 0 Comments

<< Blog Home

Sunday, March 25, 2012

Drug Testing Matrices

1. Hair has always been plagued by questions of external contamination and “racial bias” (dark hair follicles retain drugs longer than dark hair). The results are delayed causing community protection concerns. The clear advantage is that it can detect drugs for up to three months, though episodes of usage and drug differentiation may prove difficult.

2. Oculomotor is gender neutral, un-invasive and inexpensive. Critics claim that it misses too many true positives due to a shorter window of detection and some suggest that areas like fatigue can be misread by an instrument. It does not have the ability to differentiate between substances and measures impairment rather than usage. There are no established studies, standards or case law regarding its legal defensibility.

3. Sweat patches offer continuous monitoring but seem to fall off and are subject to tampering. They are gender neutral but are expensive and have never seemed to have caught on for various reasons.

4. Oral fluids enjoy the benefit of being a gender neutral process and seems virtually immune to tampering. Oral fluid testing devices are also as accurate as the other matrices in detecting drugs of abuse except for marijuana. There is very little THC in oral fluids and if the detection of this drug is important to your program, this may not be your matrix of choice. It is also a more dangerous bodily fluid when compared to urine which is sterile.

5. Urine. This is and will continue to be the matrix of choice for at least the near term. Drugs and their metabolites are highly concentrated in urine and it is an inexpensive means to test for a wide variety of drugs. Devices are FDA cleared and the standards well established. Panels are easily customizable allowing tailoring a regimen for a specific area. It appears to be the most legally defensible means to test for drugs of abuse. It is, however, subject to test tampering and effective programs should consider having specimen validity tests (SVT) available to insure the integrity of their drug testing process. Most adulterants take at least a few hours to work their magic so the best time to administer an SVT is at the time of collection.

Screening is available on our on-site devices and via our laboratory services for drug abuse testing kits.

Labels: clia, devices, fda, hair, marijuana, matrix, oral_fluids, urine

by: BioTechScreening 0 Comments

<< Blog Home