Reliability Concerns Regarding Probation Drug Screens

The NC Department of Public Safety (DPS) has begun relying on less accurate presumptive testing for urine screens for drugs for probation, prison, and DSS cases. The focus of this post will be probation cases, though the testing is the same for prison and DSS cases.

Testing Prior to 2014

Until February 2014, the Department of Public Safety maintained two laboratories with trained staff and EMIT analyzers (an immunoassay test) to run either initial testing or additional testing on urine that gave a positive result on an screening test. These labs tested approximately 125,000 samples per year. The North Carolina State Crime Lab uses similar equipment to the former DPS labs for presumptive toxicology testing.

Current Drug Testing Procedures

The DPS labs were closed in early 2014. On-site urine drug screening is now performed by probation officers using a presumptive test kit similar to the type of urine dip test that can be purchased over the counter at many stores. Currently, additional testing is completed by Norchem, a private lab in Arizona, only when the test subject immediately denies use of a controlled substance. If the test subject admits use, the urine specimen is discarded and a positive result is reported (See NC DPS Division of Adult Correction and Juvenile Justice – Community Corrections – Policy & Procedures – Chapter H – Section .0400 Substance Abuse Screening Program, available athttps://www.ncdps.gov/div/CC/Publications/Policy.pdf, p. 367, subsection (i)). Because the urine sample is discarded, if the test subject later denies use, the sample cannot be re-tested using more reliable methods.

Reditest and the Need for Confirmatory Testing

The Reditest Panel Dip Test (“Reditest”) is the on-site screening test currently used by probation officers. The Reditest is one of many presumptive test kits which are intended to screen for drugs in urine. The Reditest package insert which describes how to use the product states in its “Limitations” section that the test “provides only a preliminary analytical test result. A secondary analytical method must be used to obtain a confirmed result.” The instruction card for a similar product can be found here. The instructions note that gas chromatography/mass spectrometry (GC/MS) is the “preferred confirmatory method.”

Reditest and Lack of Validation and On-Site Quality Assurance and Quality Control

Reditest recommends but does not provide “positive and negative controls to be tested as good laboratory practice to confirm the test procedure and to verify proper test performance.” Reditest kits are not being validated by the end user in North Carolina. If batches of test kits are not validated, there is no check on the accuracy of kits being used in the state. Immunoassay testing performed by the DPS labs prior to 2014 revealed that on several occasions the on-site test kits shipped to probation and other offices did not work as expected and yielded either inaccurate or uninterpretable results.

To administer the Reditest, a provider dips a portion of the card in a urine sample for 15 seconds. Five minutes later the results can be obtained. The card should have a control line appear in each testing area. If any line appears in the testing section (no matter how faint), the results are negative for that screen. If a line does not appear in the testing section, the manufacturer’s website explains how to send the sample to a laboratory for confirmatory testing. Administration of these presumptive tests by probation officers instead of individuals with scientific training further complicates the potential for incorrect results.

False Positives with Reditest

Included on the package insert are a subset of clinical studies which demonstrate the preliminary nature of the test. Agreement with GCMS, a more accurate confirmatory test, ranged from 89%-99%. The numbers demonstrate the possibility for false positives. In tests such as these, a false positive is typically caused by a legal substance which the kit confuses with an illicit drug. Most commonly this involves over-the-counter medications. For example, some kits will register pseudoephedrine as methamphetamine. The FDA also notes that results from these types of tests can be affected by how the test was performed, how the urine was stored, what the person ate or drank before taking the test, and any other medications the person may have taken.

Admissibility of Screening Test Results

In State v. Carter, 765 S.E.2d 56 (N.C. App. 2014), the N.C. Court of Appeals held that field drug test kits, which are presumptive tests, are inadmissible due to their lack of reliability. The Court noted that for testing of controlled substances to be admissible, it “must be based on a scientifically valid chemical analysis[.]” To establish that a test is admissible, the party must present evidence that the test methods are sufficiently reliable. Results of these initial tests without confirmatory testing should not be admissible and should not be sufficient for the basis of revocation of probation.

Screening Tests and Workplace Testing

Use of the Reditest would not meet federal guidelines for workplace testing. The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) 2015 Mandatory Guidelines for Federal Workplace Drug Testing requires that an initial drug test be an immunoassay or alternate technology, such as spectrometry or spectroscopy. (Section 11.9, Available athttps://www.federalregister.gov/articles/2015/05/15/2015-11523/mandatory-guidelines-for-federal-workplace-drug-testing-programs#p-426) An HHS-certified laboratory must validate an initial drug test before testing specimens. (Section 11.9) Initial test results must be confirmed by an analytical method that uses mass spectrometric identification. Such methods include gas chromatography/mass spectrometry (GC/MS), liquid chromatography/mass spectrometry (LC/MS), GC/MS/MS, LC/MS/MS] or equivalent. (Section 11.12) Only specimens that yield a positive result on initial and confirmatory tests are reported as positive results. (Section 11.17)

In North Carolina, the testing used to allege a probation violation, revoke probation or remove a child from a parent’s custody would not qualify as even an initial test in the federal employment context.

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How many homeless people are there in America?

MANY city dwellers do their best not to see the homeless people who share their streets and pavements. Donald Trump once famously insisted that his security guards clear all tramps and panhandlers from the pavement in front of Trump Tower. Even when the homeless aren’t being chased away, they can seem invisible. In 2014, the New York City Rescue Mission, a shelter, conducted a social experiment, Make Them Visible, in which they filmed participants walking past relatives disguised as homeless people. None of the participants noticed their relations sitting on the street. “We don’t look at them. We don’t take a second look,” said Michelle Tolson, then director of public relations for the organisation, at the time.

Every two years, however, American cities make a huge effort to take note of their homeless populations as part of the federally mandated “point-in-time” survey. Volunteers and shelter workers search pavements, parks, and tunnels to count how many of their city’s residents are living without shelter on a given night. The data is combined with a tally of shelter beds to gauge the success of the previous year’s service efforts and to estimate how many people will need shelter in the coming year. In 2014 , 1.49 million people used homeless shelters and 578,424 were recorded as being without shelter: sleeping on the streets, in tents, in cars, and other exposed places. Cities completed the 2016 point-in-time count in January.

The count is a critical supplement to shelter programmes' year-long tallies, which only record the number of people actively seeking help. It also helps fill out nationwide data and federal reports to provide a more complete picture of homelessness in America. The Department of Housing and Urban Development uses this information to determine funding for cities and to design programs and initiatives, such as Barack Obama’s proposal to spend $11 billion helping homeless families.

But the count is a flawed measure. Counting on one night of the year, every two years, is likely to have its limits. For example, the count is made in January, when icy weather makes an accurate tally of the homeless especially difficult. Many people seek temporary shelter with friends or family, or take refuge in hidden locations that volunteers don’t find. Walking a city, counting heads seems a rather crude, old-fashioned method of collecting data. But a better approach has yet to be found. The result is that the homeless remain, to some extent, invisible even in data and census records that seek to make them visible.

If homeless people are not seen, it is difficult to tackle the problems they face. As Giselle Routhier, policy director for the Coalition for the Homeless in New York, explains, “If you don’t have an accurate read of the problem, you can’t accurately identify solutions.”

Correction: the original version of this article suggested that Michelle Tolson is still director of the New York City Mission. She has left the organisation.

Full > http://preview.tinyurl.com/zomwhhj

Google & MIT Self-Driving Car Project

Imagine if everyone could get around easily and safely, regardless of their ability to drive.

Aging or visually impaired loved ones wouldn't have to give up their independence. Time spent commuting could be time spent doing what you want to do. Deaths from traffic accidents—over 1.2 million worldwide every year—could be reduced dramatically, especially since 94% of accidents in the U.S. involve human error.

Our self-driving cars are designed to navigate safely through city streets.

They have sensors designed to detect objects as far as two football fields away in all directions, including pedestrians, cyclists and vehicles—or even fluttering plastic shopping bags and rogue birds. The software processes all the information to help the car safely navigate the road without getting tired or distracted.

Full > https://www.google.com/selfdrivingcar/

Vox Technology View

We've only begun to think through how self-driving cars could one day reshape our roads, cities, and lives — for better and for worse.

They might, for example, make traffic lights obsolete. Which... is actually a bit unsettling.

In the video above, researchers at MIT’s Senseable City Lab demonstrate how streets full of autonomous vehicles wouldn't necessarily need stoplights. If the cars were all communicating with each other, they could simply slow down a bit and "slot" their way through intersections at steady speeds without ever causing a collision.

The model for "slot-based intersections" is described in this recent paper in PLOS One.The researchers found that reducing reliance on stoplights would greatly cut down on delays and congestion. No more waiting for the light to turn green. Cars would lower their speed to fit into a "slot" and then breeze right through the intersection without stopping. Sounds wonderfully efficient, right?

Except this also raises some difficult urban-planning questions. Slot-based intersections obviously don't work for places where pedestrians need to cross. Or for bicycles. So what do you do there? More broadly, accommodating people who walk or bike is going to be a major challenge for autonomous vehicles (AEVs). There's a real risk that in an AEV-centric future, roads could end up catering far more to cars than they do today — pushing everyone else out.

Granted, this technology is still a long, long ways off, as Kevin Hartnett nicely points outin the Boston Globe. Cars will first need to be able to communicate not just with each other but likely with a central traffic controller. And roads would have to be filled entirely with autonomous vehicles — if you had even one human driver, that could muck up the flow. A stoplight-free future is decades away, maybe more.

Even so, it's a good example of how radically self-driving cars could remake our transportation systems, in positive and not-so-positive ways. As my colleague David Roberts says, it's wrong to imagine that AEVs will simply replace conventional vehicles on the road in a 1-1 fashion and all else will stay equal. All else won't stay equal. Massive systemic changes are likely to emerge from a future filled with AEVs — changes that are very difficult to predict in advance. It's much like how the advent of the internet didn't simply replace the postal service.

The end of stoplights is one example of a possible systemic change with far-reaching implications. No doubt there will be many more.

Full > http://www.vox.com/2016/3/29/11324690/self-driving-cars-intersections

It's time for councils to stop out-of-control outsourcing

Under the previous, coalition government, local authority outsourcing of services doubled. The value of local government contracts keeps increasing and contract periods keep getting longer. Meanwhile, as a consequence of the coalition government’s Open Public Services reform programme, councils are under pressure to outsource, while deep cuts force them to consider it a way of cutting costs.

None of this is popular with the public. In polling commissioned by campaign group We Own It, 61% of the population thinks that local and central government should run services in-house as the default. Only 21% want to see more outsourcing.

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That’s hardly surprising when you consider the recent scandals over outsourced services. In 2013, the Serious Fraud Office launched a criminal investigation into G4S and Serco, both large outsourcing companies, over allegations they overcharged on government contracts to provide electronic tagging of prisoners. At the end of last year, the government was found to be paying Serco £1m to run an empty secure children’s unit for seven weeks. And in September, G4S lost the contract for running a young offender facility, after it was graded as inadequate amid concern over the degrading treatment of detainees.

A comprehensive review of the research finds that there is no empirical evidence that the private sector is more efficient. Research also suggests that many authorities take services in-house as a way to cut costs and improve quality. Although outsourcing might mean cheaper services in the short term, there’s a knock-on effect on morale and the quality of service provided, and in the longer term you lose flexibility and control.

We Own It campaigns for public services – waste services, children’s services, parks and libraries, social care – that put people first. Our new campaign, Our Services Our Say, calls on councils to support principles of transparency, accountability and people before profit in public services, and tell us how they will put these into practice locally.

We’re suggesting a new process for public service commissioning. Private providers should be subject to freedom of information requests, while public service contracts, performance and financial data should be publicly available – a proposal that is supported by 67% of the population.

We also call for public consultation over public services, especially before any outsourcing of services or privatisation of assets takes place. We think the public should have the right to recall providers who do a bad job – and while this couldn’t apply to existing contracts, it could be introduced for new ones.

Under our proposals, the public interest case would be made for any privatisation or outsourcing. There would always be an in-house bid on the table (or a reason given if there isn’t) and social value would be the priority.

This campaign aims to stop out-of-control outsourcing, but it’s also a way to give the public a say. We all pay for public services and we all use them on a daily basis.

We already have broad support and on Wednesday, Liverpool city council became the first council to pass a motion in support of the campaign. This council has already cancelled its street-cleaning contract, bringing the service back in-house. We would like there to be national legislation – a public service users bill – to make these common sense ideas a reality. In the meantime, we hope councils will lead the way.

Cat Hobbs is the director of We Own It.

Talk to us on Twitter via @Guardianpublic and sign up for your free weekly Guardian Public Leaders newsletter with news and analysis sent direct to you every Thursday.

Tiny Buddha

30 Ways to Live Life to the Fullest

“Begin at once to live and count each separate day as a separate life.” ~Seneca

At times, it’s seemed as though life contains an endless supply of days.

I thought this for sure when I was younger. It didn’t matter how long I held a grudge or how long I waited to do something I wanted—there would be an unlimited pool of other opportunities. At least, that’s what I thought back then.

Maybe it’s a rite of passage from childhood to adulthood, the moment when you realize life happens now and that’s all you’re guaranteed. It doesn’t really hit you when you merely know it intellectually, like you know your ABCs, state capitals, and other concrete facts.

It hits you when somehow you feel it. Your health declines. You lose someone you love. A tragedy rocks your world. It isn’t until you realize that all life fades that you consider now a commodity, and a scarce one at that.

But maybe that’s irrelevant. Maybe living a meaningful, passionate life has nothing to do with its length and everything to do with its width.

With this in mind, I recently asked Tiny Buddha’s Facebook friends, “How do you live life to the fullest?” I was inspired by what they had to say, so I’ve used them to create this list:

1. Live in the moment. Forget the past and don’t concern yourself with the future. (Tanner Christensen)

2. Fully embrace the now, no matter what the situation. (Patrick Flynn)

3. Do the things you love. (Diego Felipe Villa Serna)

4. Learn to forgive and embrace unconditional love. (Ann Glasgow)

5. Live every day as if it’s your last, embracing each experience as if it’s your first. (Jennifer Fertado)

6. Believe in “live and let live.” (Satyendra Pandey)

7. Use quiet reflection, honesty, and laughter. (Erin Rogers Kronman)

8. Be other-centered. (Tricia Mc)

9. Find calm in making art. (Z.r. Hill)

10. Focus on today and how you can do your best to live it to the fullest. (Amelia Krump)

11. Participate in life instead of just watching it pass you by. (Lindsey Wonderson)

12. Stay healthy, eat right, and most importantly, be kind to all. (Tho Nguyen)

13. Pray, forgive yourself, appreciate others, listen to your gut, do things you enjoy, and remind yourself that we are all loved and connected. (Sandra Lumb)

14. Don’t sweat the small stuff. (Allison Gillam)

15. Question everything, keep it simple, and help whenever and however you can. (Lynda Corrigan Sutherland)

16. Try to enjoy every minute of every day. (Maria Ahlin)

17. Appreciate life’s every second. (Anna-Karin Boyaciyan-Demirciyan)

18. Step through new doors. The majority of the time there’s something fantastic on the other side. (Terri Mindock)

19. Remember that all is a gift, but the most precious of all gifts is life and love. (Debbie Teeuwen)

20. Keep your spirit free, be flexible, let go. (Leslie Brown)

21. “Do one thing every day that scares you.” ~Baz Luhrmann (Adam Raffel)

22. Don’t attach to outcomes. (Wp Ho)

23. Spend as much time with a two year old as possible. (Jackie Freeman)

24. Enjoy each and every moment of life. Every day is a new challenge and opportunity to discover something new. (Chirag Tripathi)

25. Budget travel. It is always an adventure! You get to enjoy what fate has to offer with limited means. (Ruby Baltazar)

26. Be honestly thankful for every breath you take. (Jonathan Carey)

27. Just be. (Catherine Halvorsson)

28. “Trust yourself. Trust your own strengths.” ~Gaundalf the grey (Jonathan David Evan Fulton)

29. Pause momentarily before everything you do so that you notice everything you should or could notice. (Scott Hutchinson)

30. Follow your hopes and not your fears. (Jody Bower)

What have you done today to live life to the fullest?