#rule 41

Scotland's female prison has been criticised for how it is managing women with complex mental health needs.

Cornton Vale was found to be using segregation as a way to manage "high levels of distress" experienced by some inmates.

The Mental Welfare Commission for Scotland found some were experiencing up to 82 days in segregation.

This meant up to 22 hours a day in cells described as "sparse and lacking in comfort".

A report compiled by the commission noted that the women "seemed more disturbed" within the separation and reintegration unit (SRU).

It added: "For women who were floridly unwell with acute psychosis or manic psychosis, the severity of their symptoms and level of disturbance significantly worsened in the SRU."

The commission went on to say it was "concerning to see how little mental health staff were sometimes able to engage with and support women who were acutely mentally ill or distressed".

During 2020, a total of 23 women prisoners were kept under Rule 41 - where a health professional requests they are either confined to their cell or put into segregation - for mental health reasons.

A total of 25 of these episodes were recorded, with these lasting from one day to 82 days.

The average stint in segregation was just over a month (32 days).

Segregation 'lead to escalation'

The commission said: "For those women with more complex mental health problems and vulnerabilities, for whom hospital care was often not an option, segregation appeared to be used as a way to manage their high levels of distress and behavioural disturbance in the custody environment, though it appeared to only lead to escalation."

A contract was awarded last year to replace the existing Cornton Vale women's prison with a new facility on the same site outside Stirling. The commission noted that it was "planned that women with mental health needs will no longer be cared for in the SRU".

The report said the segregation unit in the new building would be "used solely for women requiring segregation for disciplinary issues" and that women with significant mental health needs should be cared for in what was described as an "enhanced needs area".

The Commission said it has also been told by the Scottish Prison Service that it had updated mental health and trauma-informed care training for new prison officers in autumn of 2020.

The report was produced in the wake of work by the European Committee for the Prevention of Torture (CPT), which visited prisons and police facilities in Scotland in 2018.

It found cases of delays in transferring mentally unwell prisoners to hospital, saying that the records showed "patterns of escalating symptoms, indicating that each woman's acute illness was evolving whilst they were not receiving the inpatient care and treatment they urgently required".

It also highlighted "repeated inequalities" of women in prison being unable to readily access intensive psychiatric care unit beds due to a lack of facilities and pressure on local services.

Claire Lamza, senior manager at the Mental Welfare Commission, said: "This document opens a window on the lives of some of the most marginalised women in society.

"It gives some insight into the irreparable damage that is being done to those individuals, and we can only imagine the wider impact on their families and communities.

"We hope this detailed review will be read and acted upon by those who are examining Scotland's future approach to the best ways to care for mentally unwell people in prison.

"While changes are being made at Cornton Vale, the wider situation needs to be addressed, and Scotland as a society needs to do more."

'Properly supported'

Mental Wellbeing Minister Kevin Stewart said the report's recommendations would be considered carefully.

He added: "Our mental health transition and recovery plan published in October last year made clear our commitment to continue to work with partners to seek better support for those with mental ill health within the criminal justice system."

He said the plan was backed up by £120m from the recovery and renewal fund.

Amie Stepanovich, Passcode, December 2, 2016

As of yesterday, the FBI now enjoys a dramatically expanded ability to hack into your devices. In fact, with just one warrant from a cherry-picked magistrate judge, federal law enforcement can now hack into millions of devices.

You might have missed the shift. It happened without any congressional hearings or votes. And the president didn’t sign a thing.

This is all thanks to the Committee on the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure and a little change to Rule 41.

Typically, in order for a federal agency like the FBI to receive new authority to conduct invasive operations, Congress first has to pass a law that grants it to them. This means both houses must vote to approve a bill and then the president must sign it.

But Rule 41 was significantly changed by this obscure committee run by the judiciary. Because rule changes like this are supposed to be procedural and not make substantive changes to government authority, they are designed to go into effect automatically so long as Congress doesn’t proactively pass a law to stop them.

Spoiler alert: That didn’t happen. And it was a big mistake.

There are several major problems here. Although the FBI has secretly been hacking for over a decade, they have no specific legal authority to do it. When Congress passed rules to allow law enforcement to conduct wiretaps, it came with recognition that the activity was incredibly invasive and was designed to protect the rights and privacy of innocent people. And hacking is potentially much, much more invasive than a wiretap.

However, Congress arguably just blessed FBI hacking on a massive scale without any consideration of the privacy rights of innocent people. And even worse--they did it through an obscure process that minimized public debate.

The change to the rule essentially has implicitly authorized the FBI to hack into your devices. Additionally, in a move that that technical experts argue is overly broad, unnecessary, and incredibly risky for digital security, the rule changes also increase magistrate judges’ authority to issue warrants in certain investigations under the oft-criticized Computer Fraud and Abuse Act. All this will give the FBI berth to secretly hack into and search the devices of innocent individuals, without their knowledge or consent, if the devices have been potentially infected by a botnet.

Not only do these changes encourage forum shopping--the practice of choosing jurisdictions friendly to your side of a case--but they also allow a single warrant issued by a single judge of the government’s choosing to potentially impact the privacy and security of millions of people globally.

The Department of Justice argues that we shouldn’t be concerned about what this rule change authorizes because the FBI has no plans to use its new authority improperly.

This ignores the fact that the FBI has already conducted improper hacking operations. After all, it’s been more than a decade since the FBI started hacking. These operations have targeted criminal fugitives, people who have made bomb threats, and users of child pornography websites, but they have also gone after people who are using services for innocent, legitimate communications.

For many years the FBI kept these operations mostly secret, and the little information that we had in those early years was only available thanks to Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests by journalists at Wired and tech advocates. These FOIA documents reveal that even then, FBI hacking had a broad scope. In fact, one document shows that agents were chastised for overusing the tools because the FBI thought that if they hacked too often, they wouldn’t be able to keep the hacking secret.

As of Thursday, the FBI now has the procedural ability to get a warrant to hack--even though Congress has never actually given them specific authority to do so.

With Rule 41, Little-Known Committee Proposes to Grant New Hacking Powers to the Government Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure › TITLE VIII. SUPPLEMENTARY AND SPECIAL PROCEEDINGS If you thought the NSA was bad enough for unwarranted surveillance on every citizen in the US and the outside, you haven't seen nothing yet. Here's a quote on the basis of Rule 41:

The change to Rule 41 isn’t merely a procedural update. It significantly expands the hacking capabilities of the United States government without any discussion or public debate by elected officials. If members of the intelligence community believe these tools are necessary to advancing their investigations, then this is not the path forward. Only elected members of Congress should be writing laws, and they should be doing so in a matter that considers the privacy, security, and civil liberties of people impacted.

From Techdirt:

The proposed changes would allow the FBI to hack thousands of computers around the world with a single warrant, much like it already did during two child porn investigations. Unfortunately for the FBI, its warrant is being met with successful challenges because the agency clearly violated Rule 41 jurisdictional limitations.