In 2025, Iowa's prison system reached a settlement with the ACLU of Iowa that will fundamentally change how incarcerated people are disciplined for alleged drug violations — a reform that addresses a documented pattern of unreliable testing and inadequate due process that had resulted in false disciplinary findings and unjust punishment for an unknown number of Iowa inmates.
The Problem: Field Drug Tests and False Positives
The case centered on field drug tests — rapid screening tools that produce a presumptive positive result when a sample is exposed to chemical reagents. Field tests are widely used in law enforcement and corrections settings because they are fast and inexpensive. They are also known to have a significant false positive rate: substances as common as soap, spices, chocolate, and legal medications can trigger false positives on field tests designed to detect controlled substances.
In Iowa prisons, these tests had been used as the primary — and in many cases, the sole — basis for disciplinary findings against incarcerated people. If the field test said positive, a major disciplinary violation was charged. Inmates were then subject to sanctions including loss of good time credits (effectively extending their sentence), segregation, loss of programming, and loss of visitation.
The field tests used by Iowa prisons are not considered reliable for medical treatment or employment purposes — industries where a false positive would have serious consequences. Standard professional practice in those fields requires confirmation of a positive field test result with a more accurate laboratory-based analysis. Iowa prisons had not been requiring this confirmation step, and had not even been permitting inmates to request it.
The Three Plaintiffs
The settlement resolved lawsuits filed on behalf of three women incarcerated at the Iowa Correctional Institution for Women in Mitchellville: Amanda Wright, Monica Fagan, and Cheyanne Harris. Each woman had faced major disciplinary charges based on field drug tests and had been denied the ability to have the test results confirmed through more reliable laboratory analysis.
Iowa's State Appeal Board approved the settlement agreement, formalizing the reforms as binding commitments.
What Iowa DOC Agreed to Change
The settlement produced two major systemic reforms that apply not just to the three plaintiffs but to all Iowa prison inmates statewide:
1. Lab Confirmation Required
Going forward, Iowa prisons must allow inmates to have positive field drug test results confirmed with a more reliable, laboratory-based test before a disciplinary finding is made. This brings Iowa's prison drug testing practice into alignment with the standard used in medical and employment contexts. A field test that cannot be confirmed by a lab test cannot form the sole basis for a disciplinary sanction.
2. Higher Burden of Proof
Previously, Iowa prisons needed to show only "some evidence" to find an inmate guilty of a major disciplinary violation — a standard so low that almost any accusation, regardless of evidentiary quality, could satisfy it. Under the settlement, Iowa prisons must now demonstrate the "greater weight of evidence" — a preponderance standard, meaning that the evidence supporting the violation must be more persuasive than the evidence against it.
This is the same standard used by federal prisons for disciplinary hearings and aligns Iowa with a more defensible due process framework. It does not give inmates a presumption of innocence equivalent to criminal court, but it does require that disciplinary findings rest on a demonstrably stronger evidentiary basis.
Why This Matters: Good Time Credits and Sentences
The stakes of prison disciplinary findings are not merely administrative. In Iowa, as in most states, major disciplinary violations can result in the loss of good time credits — credits that reduce an inmate's sentence. A false disciplinary finding based on a bad drug test can therefore extend the actual time someone spends in prison beyond what their sentence required. The wrongful denial of freedom, even for days or weeks, is a serious injury — and it was occurring in Iowa prisons on the basis of testing methods that the medical and employment sectors had long since recognized as insufficiently reliable.
What This Means for Families
If your loved one in Iowa DOC receives a disciplinary charge based on a drug test, they now have the right to request laboratory confirmation of the test result before the disciplinary finding is made. Encourage them to:
- Request lab confirmation in writing immediately upon receiving notice of a positive field test result
- Document the request and any response to it
- Contest disciplinary findings that are based solely on a field test result without lab confirmation
- Contact the ACLU of Iowa (aclu-ia.org) if they believe the new procedures are not being followed
Iowa DOC headquarters: 510 East 12th Street, Des Moines, IA 50319. Phone: (515) 725-5701. Website: doc.iowa.gov.