LINCOLN- Nebraska lawmakers took steps Friday to limit the state prison system's reliance on inconclusive field tests to discipline incarcerated people suspected of harboring drugs, a year after the Legislature's prison watchdog raised concerns about the practice. Since 2018, Nebraska's Department of Correctional Services has routinely used "presumptive field testing devices" that resemble at-home pregnancy and COVID-19 tests to build internal discipline cases against inmates without seeking confirmatory testing, according to last year's report from the Office of the Inspector General of the prison system.

That practice, which runs counter to warnings in the user manual for the field tests, "increases the likelihood that people will be punished — including spending more time in prison — for something they did not do," Inspector General Doug Koebernick's office warned in the 26-page report published in March 2024. Lawmakers did not vote to end the practice Friday, but they did move to provide recourse for inmates who face discipline for suspected drug or alcohol violations based on the presumptive tests, which sometimes yield inaccurate results.

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