ABSTRACT
Urinalysis is by a large order of magnitude the most common method of psychoactive drug testing in current use. From a practical perspective, the amount of testing necessary to approach equity or near certainty of detection in a urinalysis-based monitoring system would quickly be onerous. This chapter presents data on the concordance outcomes from 90 cases of probationers who were monitored for drug use by hair and urinalysis for 6 consecutive months. It evaluates the degree and nature of agreement and disagreement between assay outcomes for the two specimens for cocaine. The chapter discusses and illustrates the potential clinical utility of hair assays and their ability to detect and monitor cocaine use in a criminal justice application. Drug testing of these individuals has received support from both the courts as well as, in general, the public. However, there are several issues for criminal justice testing that overlap those of the employment context, especially equity, reliability, and the concern with evasion.
