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Rash of 5,000 False-Positive Prisoner Drug Tests Going 
to California Parole Board Anyway

For most of 2024, drug tests performed on California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR) prisoners returned a positive rate for opioids in a narrow range between 6.6% and 6.8%. But in May 2024, the rate skyrocketed to 17.1%. It rose again the following month to 20.5%. It remained elevated at 17.1% in July 2024. The sudden jump was followed by a return to the previous range that was just as sudden.

On April 9, 2025, Oakland parole assistance nonprofit Un-Common Law (UCL) announced on its social media pages that the culprit had been found: In a letter to a UCL client, the CDCR admitted that private vendor Quest Diagnostics had changed the reagent used in tests during those months while the normal reagent was temporarily unavailable. 

The CDCR letter promised that the substituted tests “passed all quality-control metrics” and called their results only “slightly different.” But the state earlier admitted that there might be a problem when it sent a list of 6,000 prisoners and parolees with possibly affected tests to the Prison Law Office (PLO), a nonprofit providing court-ordered oversight in lawsuits challenging provision of healthcare by the CDCR, according to PLO attorney Allison Hardy.

From its own analysis, UCL estimated that there were at least 5,000 false-positive test results. Though the CDCR doesn’t use the results as a basis for discipline, they are reported to the state Board of Parole Hearings (BPH), where they may impact parole decisions. Attorneys have long argued against that practice, noting that there is no requirement for a positive test result to be confirmed by additional testing before reporting to BPH.

California Correctional Health Care Services (CCHCS), the prison system medical provider, said it had identified the “unexpected increase” in positive test results and confronted Quest, which then admitted to the change in reagent used. Spokesman Kyle Buis added that “CCHCS is in the process of directly notifying patients who may have been impacted by a falsely positive test,” while also “reiterating that these tests are intended for clinical use only.”  

 

Additional source: The Guardian

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