The Spencer report into the abscond of violent offender Brian ‘The Hawk’ Martin has found a series of failures in the process that led the prisoner to be moved into the Open Prison Estate.

The report found a catalogue of errors made at Shotts Prison led to prisoner Martin going on the run for a week before handing himself in.

This was despite Kenny MacAskill’s pledge to make changes to assessment procedures after the Robert Foye case where a prisoner raped a young woman whilst on the run from the Open Estate.

The Report also backs Labour’s call for Open Estate prisoners to be electronically tagged to ensure that if prisoners absconded they would be captured more quickly. The report also says that a senior prison official should have to sign off every transfer to an Open Prison.

Labour’s Shadow Justice Secretary Richard Baker said:

"Professor Spencer has highlighted a number of serious errors that led to this violent and dangerous prisoner going on the run. It took a week for him to hand himself in and it was fortunate that he did not attack anyone whilst on the loose.

"The report makes it clear that the system is broken and changes will have to be made. We want to ensure that only a prison governor should have the power to approve a transfer and we would like to see the introduction of tagging for open estate prisoners as soon as possible.

"Kenny MacAskill told us that after the Robert Foye case that lessons would be learned and he would change the system. This report makes it clear that he has singularly failed.

"The public has lost confidence in Kenny MacAskill, they have no faith that he is the man to fix the broken system that he established and they have no confidence in his ability to sort this mess out.

 25/06/2009