NEW YORK -- In 2022, New York City’s jails commissioner, Louis Molina, issued a dire warning to local lawmakers: fentanyl was pouring into Rikers Island through the mail, he said, spurring an overdose crisis among the jail's detainees and putting guards at risk. As evidence of the insidious threat, Molina passed around a child’s drawing of a reindeer, one of hundreds of seized items he said had been “literally soaked in the drug and mailed to people in custody.” But that claim was based on faulty drug-testing kits with a stunning 85% false positive rate, according to a report released Wednesday by the city’s Department of Investigation.
The report found the city vastly overstated the prevalence of fentanyl sent by mail to detainees. When investigators retested 71 pieces of mail initially flagged by field tests as containing fentanyl, only 10 actually showed traces of the drug. The drawing of a reindeer highlighted by Molina was fentanyl-free.
Field tests indicating an influx of fentanyl-laced mail to Rikers Island fueled a yearslong campaign by Mayor Eric Adams’ administration to bar people in city custody from receiving physical mail. As a replacement, city officials proposed redirecting mail to an offsite vendor, who would then upload it digitally for the incarcerated person to read on a tablet — a practice used in other correctional systems, including New York's state prisons. So far, the proposal has been blocked by a jail oversight board.
Jocelyn Strauber, .