Wilson Ultra 97 Review
Jennell Venier
Introduction
[1] The petitioners in these three cases were all at various times prisoners in the prison of Peterhead. They have all presented petitions for judicial review complaining that the conditions of their incarceration subjected them to inhuman or degrading treatment and were an unjustified interference with their right to respect for their private lives, all contrary to Articles 3 and 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights. They maintain that the actions of the governor and the Scottish Prison Service (SPS) in detaining them in such conditions were unlawful by virtue of section 6(1) of the Human Rights Act 1998 and ultra vires in terms of section 57(2) of the Scotland Act 1998. They each seek declarator to that effect and damages as just satisfaction in terms of together with various ancillary orders. Although there were averments in each petition in support of a common law case, these were not insisted in. Greens and Wilson also crave in their petitions an order interdicting the respondents from returning them to Convention incompatible conditions of detention.
[2] The primary complaint in each case relates to the sanitary arrangements in place at Peterhead in the single cells occupied by each of the petitioners during their periods of incarceration. Apart from one unit of cells with which these cases are not concerned, no integral sanitation exists at Peterhead and each cell was equipped with a chemical toilet known as a porta potti. The petitioners complain about all the circumstances of use of these items, the lack of hand washing facilities within the cells, and the lack of ventilation. Complaints are also made about the practice of "bombing" by which prisoners defecated into newspapers or other items, or urinated into jars, throwing the end product out of the window. One of the places where such material ended up was a flat roof adjacent to cells on the ground floor of A Hall, one of which was occupied for a time by the petitioner Wilson. Complaints are also made about the size of the cells and the degree of natural or electric light available.
[3] In support of their contentions the petitioners quote extensively from reports of the Council of Europe Committee for Prevention of Torture (CPT), established to strengthen the protection of those deprived of their liberty against treatment of the kind prohibited by article 3, annual reports of Her Majesty's Chief Inspector of Prisons for Scotland (HMCIPS), ministerial statements and consultation documents.
[4] As to the effects on them, each prisoner avers that they felt frustrated, worthless and degraded by the conditions of their incarceration. They suffered a loss of self esteem and claim that their human dignity was diminished by the conditions of detention. They suffered feelings of disgust, humiliation and mental anguish all caused by these conditions which exposed them to distress and hardship of an intensity exceeding the unavoidable level of suffering inherent in a sentence of imprisonment.
[5] These three cases are examples of a considerable number of similar cases - into four figures - raised and sisted in Scottish courts. They were selected by the parties as cases intended to be illustrative of the range of issues raised in the many pending cases. Both parties lodged a note of what they understood by the term "illustrative cases" which had been applied to these petitions from an early stage. The respondents note suggests that they were proceeding on the basis that these cases would be representative of the spectrum of the claims before the court, stating however that "the respondents alone cannot give that assurance to the court". With respect to the respondents I fail to see how they could ever have been operating under such an illusion. The respondents are in every bit as good a position as the petitioners to determine the nature of the cases which are pending before the court. They agreed that these cases should be selected as illustrative in the knowledge that they all related to Peterhead. These cases are all Peterhead single-cell cases and it is difficult to see how they might be thought to be representative of conditions generally in other prisons. As the petitioners' note records these cases may be illustrative of the application of articles 3 and 8 to the conditions of detention at HMP Peterhead during the periods covered by the petitions. To that extent the outcome of these cases may offer guidance in other similar cases. It may be that some of the issues determined in these cases would be the same issues raised in cases in respect of other prisons and so some guidance may also follow in respect of such cases. It was understood and accepted that the court would, where appropriate, indicate the extent to which particular features of these individual cases, for example the "bombing" issue in Wilson's case, may or may not be a determinative factor, and again in such a situation this may offer guidance to the future disposal of such cases.
[6] There was considerable agreement about a number of matters relating to the conditions in which the petitioners were detained. Lengthy joint minutes were entered into in respect of each petitioner reflecting these.
[7] At various times from October 2006 the petitioner Greens has been detained in HMP Peterhead. He occupied cells 3/05 in A Hall, 3/07 in B Hall Annex (BHA) and 3/17, 4/01 and 4/04 in D Hall. Since March 2010 he has been in E Hall where prisoners have access to lavatory facilities. The petitioner Wilson at various times from April 2008 occupied cells 1/19 and 4/05 in A Hall, and 2/07 in BHA. He is currently detained in HMP Dumfries. At various times from October 2005 the petitioner Stanger occupied cells 2/04, 2/18 and 3/22 in B Hall, 1/06 and 3/04 in BHA and 2/06 in C Hall. He was transferred to HMP Inverness prior to being released on 18 May 2010. The configurations of the cells were in each case similar. The location and precise dimensions of each of the cells occupied by each of the prisoners during their time in Peterhead was agreed by joint minute. The type of windows, nature of the lighting, levels of artificial lighting, and the standards for lighting were all agreed as were the fixtures and fittings present in each cell. Prisoners at Peterhead have been and continue to be allowed to have the following items in their cells: a radio cassette/cd player, personal stereo, musical instrument, personal toiletries, photographs, photograph album, curtains, jigsaw puzzles, board games, electronic hand held games, a typewriter, cell hobbies, up to 30 books, up to 20 magazines, up to 7 newspapers, stationery and writing materials, duvet, duvet cover, pillow, pillow slip and sheets. They have also been allowed the following items in their cells: television, DVD player and up to 10 DVDs, mini hi-fi system, games console and up to 10 games, desk lamp, electric typewriter, electric musical instrument, and electric fan.
[8] Various work opportunities are available for prisoners who are each allocated to a work party after induction. The work allocation of the various petitioner during their time in Peterhead was agreed.
[9] Greens was allocated to the cooks' work party from 26 October 2006 to on or around 14 January 2007, the Vocational Training (V.T.) Joiners from 12 February 2007 to on or around 19 August 2007, the V.T. Bricklayers from 20 August 2007 to on or around 3 February 2008, the Garden work party from 7 April 2008 to on or around 18 September 2009, the sanitation work party as a sanitation passman from 19 September 2009 to on or around 7 March 2010 and the V.T Joiners from 8 March 2010 until the present day.
[10] Wilson was employed in the kitchen from 22 April to 21 July 2008; as a passman from 24 July to 15 August 2008 and 20 November 2008 to 3 July 2009; and in the Industrial Cleaners shed from 15 August to 20 November 2008, although the petitioner did not work as an industrial cleaner but took a BCIS course.
[12] Various courses are available to prisoners dealing with sexual offending, alcohol awareness and cognitive skills. Greens completed a sex offenders programme and a cognitive skills course and Wilson took a vocational course in PT. Other courses were undertaken as is narrated later in a summary of their evidence. Within the prison there are also many educational opportunities for prisoners including the opportunity to apply for courses through the Open University. Greens undertook classes in numeracy, Wilson in communications, numeracy, art and computing and Stanger in communications and computing. Activities available in the evening include soft toy making, choir practice, meetings of alcoholics anonymous, prison band and field nights. These are at the discretion of staff and may be cancelled because of sick leave or holidays. Each prisoner receives one hour of exercise per day and may in addition have five sessions a week of physical training. Recreation is scheduled during the week for the time between 1845hrs and 2100hrs and at weekends from 0940hrs to 1145hrs and 1400hrs to 1645hrs. Facilities for recreation include snooker, pool, table tennis, darts, dominoes, cards, library and television. The chaplaincy offers services for all denominations. Prisoners receive three...
There is an urgent need for fast, non-destructive and quantitative two-dimensional dopant profiling of modern and future ultra large-scale semiconductor devices. The low voltage scanning electron microscope (LVSEM) has emerged to satisfy this need, in part, whereby it is possible to detect different secondary electron yield values (brightness in the SEM signal) from the p-type to the n-type doped regions as well as different brightness levels from the same dopant type. The mechanism that gives rise to such a secondary electron (SE) contrast effect is not fully understood, however. A review of the different models that have been proposed to explain this SE contrast is given. We report on new experiments that support the proposal that this contrast is due to the establishment of metal-to-semiconductor surface contacts. Further experiments showing the effect of instrument parameters including the electron dose, the scan speeds and the electron beam energy on the SE contrast are also reported. Preliminary results on the dependence of the SE contrast on the existence of a surface structure featuring metal-oxide semiconductor (MOS) are also reported. Copyright 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.