Lancaster County Prison is no longer routinely handcuffing participants in its medicated-assisted treatment, or MAT program for substance abuse disorder, Warden Cheryl Steberger said.
The policy change took effect this week, Steberger told the Prison Board at its monthly meeting.
The prison had been handcuffing MAT participants to prevent them from secreting the medications they are provided in the program and smuggling them back into the general population. The system was adopted after other methods of preventing drug diversion proved insufficient, Deputy Warden Joe Shiffer said earlier this year.
The robust growth of the program, however, necessitated a re-evaluation, Steberger said Wednesday. With more than 160 participants on the line as of this week, handcuffing each one was taking up too much time to be practical, she said.
It was taking all day to get through everyone, from 9:30 a.m. to 5:30 or 6 p.m.
Moreover, she said, with inmates able to access MAT legitimately, her staff is hopeful that it will reduce the demand for diversion, which brings the risk of discovery and sanction.
Under the new system, handcuffing will be limited to individuals with a documented track record of diversion attempts. The prison will handle diversion incidents through its internal misconduct procedures, and it has the option of referring serious cases to the district attorney’s office for prosectuion if warranted, the warden said.
“As with all policies, we continue to review,” she said.
Independent opioid researcher and policy advocate Gail Groves Scott had strongly criticized the handcuffing policy, saying it was well outside normal practice for correctional institutions and potentially a violation of inmates’ rights under the Americans With Disabilities Act, under which individuals with substance use disorders are a protected class and cannot be subject to discriminatory treatment.
Scott said Wednesday via email that she is relieved at the policy change, but disappointed it took so long. Individualized assessments based on objective evidence, she said, meet federal civil rights guidelines, while blanket protocols do not.
“I sincerely hope this decision was not just because it became a cumbersome and inefficient use of resources but because it was the wrong thing to do for medical, ethical, and legal reasons,” she said.
Drug diversion is a safety concern, corrections officials say, both because of the health hazards of diverting medication from its intended recipients to unauthorized users, and the risk of inmates fighting over black market medications.
When the handcuffing policy was in place, Steberger and Shiffer had both said it was warranted for safety and security reasons, but that it was not set in stone and could be revised.
Schematics, strip searches
In other Prison Board business, Steberger said the team designing the county’s new correctional facility is developing alternatives to the draft schematic presented in August, as the Prison Board requested at its previous meeting.
When ready, they will be presented at a public meeting. There’s no timeline for when that will happen, she and Commissioner Josh Parsons said.
Kent Kroehler, of the advocacy group Have a Heart, urged the prison staff and Prison Board to consider expanding the use of body scanners to minimize the number of strip searches. The technology continues to improve, he said, and every effort should be made to limit strip searches, which he called degrading and dehumanizing.
Strip searches and body scans are complementary security protocols, and the facility needs both options, Steberger said. Parsons agreed, but said it’s reasonable to review the use of strip searches and see if some might be unnecessary.
When strip searches are done, only corrections officers of the same gender as the inmate are present, Steberger said. The prison does not conduct body cavity searches, she said; if one is required, it is done at Lancaster General Hospital.
