The desktop device looks innocent enough. Suzanne Glacken, 57, a retired Milford educator who first underwent the drill last January during a trip to visit her 30-year-old son Derek, compares it to an electrocardiograph. And she believed she had as little to fear from the Itemiser as she did from a heart machine. [...] But just a few weeks later, Glacken returned for another visit with her son, who’s serving a life sentence for murder. She routinely swiped her clothing and skin as required, and the machine’s computer panel lit up with a flashing red light. She was told she had tested positive for not one, but two street drugs: heroin and marijuana. [...]
Glacken pleaded with SBCC guards for a retest, but they refused. She demanded to see a copy of her results, to no avail. Insulted and reduced to tears, she left that day and hasn’t returned since. Glacken is one of 237 visitors among 4442 — just over five percent — who have registered at least one positive scan by the Itemiser since January. Although she misses her son "terribly," she is convinced that she could touch off the Itemiser again — something that she does not want to risk. According to DOC policy, visitors who test positive once must submit to a pat-down search; if no contraband is found, they can enter the facility. People who receive a second positive result lose the right to "contact visits" for six months. Instead, they must be separated from prisoners by a plexiglass wall while they talk over a phone. Visitors with a third positive are barred from the prison for as long as DOC officials see fit. Glacken can’t shake her fear of being banned from visiting her son, she says. Nor can she shake the sense of shame that comes from "being flagged a heroin user by a machine."
"It’s like I’m Hester Prynne," Glacken adds. "I’ve got this big scarlet letter on my chest. Except I haven’t done anything wrong."
So in order to avoid a formal ban, the poor woman end up banning herself, effectively.
Once upon a time, we supposedly had something called "presumption of innocence" in this country, which meant that you had to go through a trial and evidence gathering and all that fun stuff before you could be pronounced guilty of a crime. Apparently, having relatives in prison is enough cause to remove all presumption of innocence. (To be sure, in this hyper-media day and age, "presumption of innocence" no longer exists, but we like to pretend it does.)
In a society in which it's estimated that 90 percent of all currency has had contact with illegal drugs in some way or another, you'd think that they'd know better than to use a device like this. At the very least, you'd think they'd install some sorts of safeguards and procedures against incorrect results.
Copyright © 2001, Iain Jackson, after-words.org
[Archives: 2001 and after]
Archives before February 5, 2001
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12/19/2001: vive la france
12/19/2001: princess, redux
12/19/2001: yemen and rumsfeld
12/18/2001: you're NOT in the army now
12/18/2001: interesting donation
12/18/2001: shame on winn dixie, indeed
12/18/2001: saudi princess
12/17/2001: new resolve
12/17/2001: a victim of the attack ... yeah, right
12/17/2001: polluters ho!