Violent criminal absconds from open prison barely a quarter of the way through his sentence: We must end the scandal of automatic early release

It has been revealed that a violent convict who is only a quarter of the way through his eight year sentence has absconded from Castle Huntly.

John Lamont, Scottish Conservative Justice Spokesperson, said:

"This is extremely worrying.

"In his report in 2009, Professor Spencer specifically recommended that dangerous prisoners should not be sent to open prisons until the year before their earliest parole date. This man was barely quarter of a way through his eight year sentence and yet he is already in an open jail.

"Of course another possible reason that Mr Lennox was there was because under automatic early release he would have got out in around a year's time.

"The most immediate priority is to find Mr Lennox and return him to prison. He is clearly not ready for an open prison environment.

"Then we must focus on ending the scandal of automatic early release. In this election, only the Scottish Conservatives are credible on the issue of ending automatic early release from our jails.

"On numerous occasions over the past 14 years, Scottish Conservatives have repeatedly tabled motions and moved amendments to scrap the discredited scheme. On each occasion we have been blocked by Labour, the Lib Dems and the SNP.

"We know that 95% of Scots want automatic early release scrapped, we want it scrapped, yet the other parties have continually voted in favour of keeping it.

"Although it was the last Conservative UK Government which introduced early release, they quickly realised the error of this system, and so left a repeal of early release on the statute books in 1997. This was ignored by the incoming UK Labour Government.

"It is common sense that the sentence handed down should be the sentence served. We will keep up the fight in the next parliament to end this discredited system – the sooner, the better."

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