SCRAM: Another Judge Finds SCRAM Unreliable With Alternative Possibilty Of Erroneous Reading!

If urinalysis has a 99.8% chance of being accurate, that would mean 2 out of 1,000 test would produce a false positive. Sounds good right? SCRAM, with their estimated 17,000,000 tests this would mean that 34,000 false positives occured. Fortunately this device won't just measure anything, so when a defendant is sleeping he/she is safe from false positives cutting this into an estimated third, right? Wrong, there are tests for obstructions as well, Jon Ugval of H.A.S. in Michigan claims it can detect socks!! Fact is there is no way to get an estimation on the accuracy of the equipment because the proprietors have obfuscated and have yet to acknowledge the possibilities of erroneous readings. Also, there is still an undetermined amount of ways the system can fail:

Judge William White, an Escambia County judge recently dismissed a claim that Dennis Gossman had violated probation by drinking alcohol. The judge was not convinced the device that claimed he drank on several occasions was accurate.In his ruling, he cited concerns about the fallibility of the device and noted that Mr. Gossman voluntarily submitted blood for tests that showed he had no alcohol in his system while the device read otherwise. Although local officers at two police stations denied him a breathtest he had plenty of witnesses to back his claim of abstinence. Judge White has pointed out a possibility that until now, was not dicussed in previous posts here, ""the unique combination of environmental factors, including the defendant's playing of an electric guitar, may have had some unexpected impact," such as the radio frequency interference (RFI) has an effect on PBT's earlier discussed here.Unfortunately instead of removing SCRAM, the judge said a probation officer could ask that he get a different job because the machine can't assure he adhere's to the terms of his probation. Inventor, Jeffrey Hawthorne, said it had virtually no "false positives" despite thousands of tests. Virtually, meaning that one has not been proven because they are smart enough to pilfer the time that a toxicology test could prove otherwise, or is this is because they never tested it for false positives. I recently found an article where the probation department was debating the use of SCRAM.
http://www.pittsburghlive.com/x/tribune-review/trib/westmoreland/s_393776.html
In this report the author, David Hunt, drinks and pours Listerine down his leg in an attempt to cover the episode, which SCRAM detected. I wrote Mr. Hunt and said," I have just read your article on SCRAM and noticed yet more tests on TAC/BAC,time delays and obstruction device.FACT: If you consume alcohol SCRAM will tell, no one ever works on outside influences to see if they can create a false positive (If you find someone to try this, use gas and it is an almost guarantee)...Try this without drinking!!!! "Pulling my sock under the SCRAM didn't stop the readings either", he said.....I wrote,"It is like a cast, itching and rashes are common, how much of the sock did you use, try it again with less and less and see for yourself, I already know!" I got a response from the gentleman that quotes,"Nothing about what I wrote was false. Maybe different "experimenting" would have led to different results. But what I did and what it told me I was doing were put in the paper just as they were. I can't find an argument to be made against the technology, but I'll admit to being skeptical when they strapped it on my ankle." His response goes on to say,"You make a good point about the "mouthwash test." I did it the way I did on purpose. The SCRAM people told me that a lot of people drink alcohol and use such an "accident" as a cover when the PO shows up. If you ask me the "SCRAM people" cleverly did this as a propaganda stunt, using the author as a pawn. There is no way to tell if the defendant used this to cover up because they do not allow a confirmatory test, although I am certain this has happened.
At any rate, there is no way to determine the accuracy of the device because we don't even know all of the ways SCRAM can produce erroneous readings. RFI may have been the result of a previosly posted false positive where the defendant was in the hospital. My guess,there is a host of possibility's yet to be discovered but it will be interesting to see if they perjure themselves claiming," SCRAM has never read a false positive" in the case I am sitting in on December 1.


In his ruling, made public Monday, White cited concerns about the fallibility of the device, which is strapped around the offender's ankle and measures vapors as they leave the body.White noted that Gossman voluntarily took blood tests that showed he had no alcohol in his system when the ankle device said he had been drinking.While the technology usually works, "the unique combination of environmental factors, including the defendant's playing of an electric guitar, may have had some unexpected impact," just as radio waves can interfere with breath tests, White wrote.
http://www.nlectc.org/NlectcRM/cc_nwsltr_oct2005.html
"It's very difficult to essentially prove the negative," Patrick Barone said, "which is that they were not drinking, especially when they're faced with a very well-funded and very well-experienced company that has a huge financial stake in justifying the result."
www.jsonline.com/news/metro/jul05/338458.asp

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post date: 11/27/05