Nicola Sturgeon backs home leave for killers despite 'horrific' Robbie McIntosh case

Nicola Sturgeon has refused to stop convicted killers being allowed home before they are considered for parole, despite admitting the Robbie McIntosh case was “horrific.”

The First Minister said that granting home leave to prisoners serving life sentences was a “well-established part of the rehabilitation process” and a “rigorous” risk assessment was always conducted beforehand.

She said lessons would be learned from the McIntosh case, including possible changes to the way the assessments are conducted, but insisted that home leave was a vital “test” that helps the authorities decide whether criminals are ready for release.

But Ruth Davidson, the Scottish Tory leader, demanded a review of a system that allows 4,000 criminals to be released before they are considered for parole and argued that home leave should be stopped for murderers.

In an impassioned plea, she argued the public expect prisoners “to serve their time” and McIntosh’s horrific attack had prompted Scots to ask again why the dice were “loaded” in favour of criminals.

The exchanges at First Minister’s Questions came after McIntosh was sentenced for battering Linda McDonald with a dumbbell as she walked with her dog through Templeton woods in Dundee on August 7 last year.

The killer was jailed for 15 years in 2002 for murdering Anne Nicoll as she walked her dog on Dundee Law on August 2, 2001, stabbing her repeatedly.

However, he conducted the attack on Mrs McDonald after being freed from Castle Huntly open prison on a week of home leave ahead of a parole board hearing.

Ms Davidson asked Ms Sturgeon if she agreed "this appalling case raises further questions about our justice system, and why killers who should be in jail are instead allowed to walk free before a parole board has even ruled that they are safe to do so".

The First Minister responded that if McIntosh is released again he would be the subject of “intensive supervision for the rest of his life.”

She said the risk assessments “involves psychological assessment, social work reports and reports on the time that they have spent in prison. Home leave is also always granted with very strict conditions applied.”

Ms Sturgeon added: “For life sentence prisoners, home leave is the final stage in a phased programme of increasing their freedoms.

“Often, it helps to inform the parole board’s decisions on a prisoner’s suitability for release. Home leave will be granted only after the prisoner has progressed successfully through the prison system.”

Prison service sources said the system had been in place since at the least the 1980s and only those who showed sustained improvement in their behaviour over a long period were considered.

But Ms Davidson said: “We have more than 4,000 convicted criminals who, like Robbie McIntosh, are being released before they’ve even been considered for parole, and often without supervision. When cases like this emerge, the question from the public is, why again?

“They don’t understand why a killer is let loose to try and kill again, why the dice is loaded against victims, and why action is only taken when another family is left to pick up the pieces of their lives.”