Soft-touch SNP risks shattering the very backbone of justice
By Graham Grant
THE terror of grandmother Linda McDonald as Robbie McIntosh confronted her last summer is barely imaginable.
McIntosh had been on home leave from prison when he launched a frenzied attack – bludgeoning her with a dumbbell – as she walked her dog.
The ordeal, in woodland in Dundee, left the 52-year-old permanently scarred and suffering from ‘nightmares and flashbacks’.
An act of astonishing brutality that will leave its mark on Mrs McDonald for the rest of her life, physical and mentally – but not one that could be predicted, surely?
Well, McIntosh, 32, had been convicted of a chillingly similar crime back in 2002 after he ‘butchered’ another dog walker, civil servant Anne Nicoll, in a cannabis-fuelled attack, also in Dundee. He was 15 at the time.
He had been jailed for life for the murder, and was locked up for a minimum of 15 years before becoming eligible for parole – and indeed had been just days away from a parole hearing when he pounced on Mrs McDonald.
But ‘life’ is a flexible concept in criminal justice, and even psychopathic murderers guilty of breath-taking barbarity are afforded the opportunity to prove they have been rehabilitated.
A ‘critical incident review’ of McIntosh’s latest crime has been carried out by the Scottish Prison Service (SPS), we are told, though it hasn’t been published – and even if it is, it may be redacted for data protection reasons.
The SPS insists it has a duty to prepare prisoners for their eventual freedom because when they come before the Parole Board for Scotland (PBS), they will be expected to show they can be trusted in the outside world.
Meanwhile McIntosh has been handed an Order for Lifelong Restriction – though he will be able to apply for parole in just five years’ time.
Last week a killer branded ‘a danger to the public’ went on the run after being allowed out on home leave from an open prison.
Police warned that Anthony McGinley, 33, should not be approached by the public after he absconded from Castle Huntly, near Dundee.
McGinley, who was convicted of a fatal knife attack, had been sentenced to nine years for culpable homicide after
stabbing 25-year-old Darren Gavan in Castlemilk, Glasgow in 2012.
The knife killer had a previous conviction for serious assault in 2003 and was jailed for 18 months in 2008 for another attack.
But yet he had been moved to a notoriously ‘leaky’ open jail, often compared – with some justification – to a holiday camp.
After all, in 2015 it emerged that Castle Huntly prisoners could unwind with a spot of fly-fishing, giving them ‘something productive’ to do in their ‘free time’.
McGinley was soon recaptured, but you might wonder why someone with such an appalling record had been deemed suitable for a spell in an open prison.
The SPS points to figures showing prisoners had nearly 60,000 days of home leave during the past three years to show that, by and large, the system works.
But in about 130 cases there were breaches of licence conditions that included prisoners reoffending.
Meanwhile scores of victims were murdered, attacked, sexually assaulted or robbed last year by criminals who had been freed early, or who were on Community Payback Orders (CPOs).
The Mail revealed in 2016 that child sex offenders were among those being handed CPOs.
Hundreds of criminals are making a mockery of the supposedly ‘get tough’ CPOs – by simply failing to turn up.
The judiciary is, of course, fiercely independent, even if Lord Carloway, the country’s top judge, has been a vocal cheerleader for SNP reforms.
They include a proposal to axe corroboration, the historic legal principle stipulating two sources for all evidence in criminal cases.
Lord Carloway was the only judge to back the plan, which was later scrapped.
He has called for a justice system that no longer metes out ‘retribution’ to offenders – a new approach that would take us into a ‘more civilised era’.
In 2015, he told a conference held by a group which works to rehabilitate criminals that the public were in favour of more lenient jail terms.
It’s hard to think of a more striking example of the disconnect between judges and the society they are meant to serve.
The political and judicial mindset is now buttressed on the notion that prison isn’t the ideal environment for criminals, and we should do more to keep them out.
Consequently the SNP is introducing a presumption against jail terms of up to a year (so much for the courts remaining free from political interference…)
The problem is that the public hasn’t been ‘copied in’ to these decisions, and many people are even now unaware of this insidious subversion of the sentencing process.
Many are also unaware that sentences passed in court can bear no relation to reality, thanks to automatic early release, a practice that is still in place despite limited SNP reforms.
Prison managers can decide to let inmates out not just on home leave but also on Home Detention Curfew, meaning they can serve out their sentences in the comfort of their lounges, wearing electronic tags.
The PBS is a shadowy organisation, largely comprised of social workers and lawyers, making decisions of life-altering gravity, with hardly any meaningful political scrutiny.
Yet violent criminals and sex offenders, including murderers and rapists, are freed early on parole at a rate of nearly two a week.
And it’s worth remembering that ‘release on parole does not depend upon an offender admitting his/her guilt’.
The Scottish Sentencing Council was set up by the SNP to restore faith in sentencing, but has become a propaganda arm of the SNP – shamelessly pumping out baseless reassurances about tough justice.
The truth is that ministers set the parameters within which courts and prisons operate, and at a stroke could put a stop to the prioritisation of criminals’ rights over those of their victims.
Their plight, as victims’ campaigners attest, is of secondary importance, and when someone is injured, sexually assaulted or killed by a prisoner freed early or on home leave – well, it’s collateral damage.
At the centre of this extraordinary charade is Justice Secretary Michael Matheson, who has been busy presiding over the meltdown of Scottish policing.
That has proved a tragic spectacle, characterised by unforgivable negligence by a Teflon minister who remains in place with a public profile almost as low as that of the PBS.
But the steady erosion of confidence in the wider justice system – rendering courts a political plaything at the expense of public safety – must rank as the greatest crime perpetrated on his watch.
*This column appeared in the Scottish Daily Mail
