Carla Crowder
May 17, 2004
 
Concerns over the reliability of prisoner drug testing continue to plague the Alabama Department of Corrections.

Four Bullock County Work Release inmates who tested positive for alcohol in late March recently got those results overturned after complaining to prison Commissioner Donal Campbell that they had not been drinking alcohol and wanted a re-test.

Campbell ordered another.

Similar problems have arisen at Birmingham Work Release, with several inmates who tested positive claiming they were not using drugs, or that a legal medication tainted the results.

A positive result can hurt an inmate's shot at parole, force an inmate to lose a work-release job, cost him or her good time and possibly result in return to a more secure prison.

"The biggest thing was they took his employment," said Veneatria McKinnon, whose husband Carl McKinnon was one of the Bullock inmates recently cleared. "When they took his job, that cut anything he was able to send home."

Veneatria McKinnon, Birmingham, wrote to Campbell's office on behalf of her husband, prompting the re-examination.

Campbell has ordered an evaluation of the entire prison system's drug testing program, but that has not started. He's searching for an outside agency to perform the probe.

Most urinalysis tests are not 100 percent accurate. That's why employers and most government agencies require a second test using a different testing method for confirmation. DOC policy does not.

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