In this episode I sat down with Natasha Baker, Supervising Attorney for Litigation and Policy at UnCommon Law, to examine a deeply troubling issue unfolding inside California prisons: the use of flawed drug test results to deny people parole.

We start with the basics — what the Medication-Assisted Treatment program is, who it serves, and why drug testing plays a role in it — before uncovering why those tests were never designed to be used as evidence of wrongdoing. Then we get into what happened when Quest Diagnostics produced a wave of false positives, how those inaccurate results made their way into parole hearings, and what it meant for people who had spent years working toward release.

This episode highlights how a clinical treatment tool becomes a punishment, and how medical errors can cost people their freedom.

Natasha Tavora Baker works as Supervising Attorney for Litigation and Policy, at Uncommon Law. Natasha holds a J.D. from the George Washington University Law School, and a B.A. from Boston College. Natasha leads Uncommon Law's strategic litigation and supports its policy efforts to address the arbitrariness of the parole hearing process.

Uncommon Law brings people serving life sentences home from prison by providing the legal, mental health, and rehabilitative support California's parole process demands, and challenging a parole system that wasn't built to recognize who they've become. Over nearly 20 years, 99% of the people they've helped come home have never returned to prison.

Links:

UnCommon Law

Medication Assisted Treatment and Parole in California State Prisons

California prisons have life-saving addiction treatment. Doctors say the parole board is undermining it.

Revealed: drug tests in California prisons yielded false positives, affecting thousands of people

Thousands of California Prisoners Falsely Tested Positive for Opioids. Did It Cost Them Their Freedom?

Created and hosted by Kim Wilson and Brian Nam-Sonenstein

Website & volunteers managed by Victoria Nam

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In this episode we talk about mental and physical healthcare in Washington's prisons. We speak with Tony Tyson, Queen J, and Darnell Jones, all incarcerated voices in our state, who talk to us about accessing care in prison, and also what they or the people around them have done to get or create care. Content warning: this episode includes first-hand accounts of medical neglect and suicidality in prison.

In-Care-Ceration was written and produced by Leah Montange and Meredith Ruff.

In this episode we explore ways that people are working to build a more caring and care-full world, and to address the harms of our carceral systems whether they are prisons, jails, or hospitals. Some of the people we talk to are interested in engaging with Washington State to change systems, and others are more interested in finding ways to do care otherwise, outside of state systems. This episode features the words of Scout Smedley, SYP, Cindi Fisher, Joshua Wallace, Lauara Van Tosh, Chris Carney, Shaun Glaze, and LeTania Severe, as well as Patreece Spence. We'd like to dedicate this episode, and the whole series to those who lost their lives or their loved ones' lives – physically or socially - to carceral systems; and to all who have devoted their lives to creating a more just, caring future, one where we aren't relying on cages or confinement to solve social problems. Thank you!

In-Care-Ceration was written and produced by Leah Montange and Meredith Ruff.