UK NEWS

SHERIFF'S FRUSTRATED RANT AT EARLY RELEASE OF TEEN THUG

Sheriff Wyllie Robertson

Thursday July 3,2008

By Stephen Wilkie

A SENIOR sheriff yesterday savaged Scotland’s early-release prison system after a thug was tagged and freed from jail.

Melissa Lafferty’s release came despite a catalogue of complaints about her behaviour while in Cornton Vale prison.

Yesterday, a furious Sheriff Wyllie Robertson demanded to know “what in the name of all that’s holy” an inmate had to do to be banned from early release.

So annoyed was he that he read out a list of complaints about Lafferty from a report compiled by the prison governor.

Serial offender Lafferty, 18, was jailed for nine months last May for assault but spent only ten weeks in Cornton Vale before being released last August.

Sheriff Robertson, sitting at Stirling Sheriff Court, said the governor’s report showed that Lafferty had tried to slam her cell door in a warder’s face. She was also abusive and argumentative, had interfered with staff telephones and thrown water on a fellow inmate.

But despite this, the report concluded: “… she qualified for Home Detention Curfew”.

Sheriff Robertson added: “I have to ask … what in the name of all that’s holy does a person have to do not to qualify for a home detention curfew, because that behaviour is quite appalling, but you were released.”

Lafferty, from Raploch, Stirling, breached her home curfew weeks after being released and returned to Cornton Vale in September.

She was back in court yesterday after pleading guilty to breaking into a house in Stirling while on probation. Sheriff Robertson jailed her for nine months.