More Victims Told As Attackers Freed

Thousands of victims of violent crime are to be given the right to know when their attacker is released from prison, The Scotsman can reveal.

A victim notification scheme, which currently entitles about 600 people to be informed of an offender’s movements, will be more than trebled from May.

Victims are currently allowed to receive such information only in the most serious cases, where their attacker has been jailed for at least four years.

But Kenny MacAskill, the justice secretary, will tell a conference in Glasgow today that the minimum sentence threshold for triggering notification will be lowered to 18 months.

This means about 2,000 victims every year will be entitled to receive a raft of information about their offenders’ movements. This will include the first date they become eligible for temporary release, information if they escape or abscond and their eventual release from prison.

Victims who sign up to the scheme will also be told if their attacker dies in custody.

The 18-month threshold could be lowered even further under a review of the scheme in two years’ time.

Jim Andrews, the director of operations at Victim Support Scotland, which is hosting the conference, said: “We deal with many people who live in the same neighbourhood as the offender of (the] serious crime committed against them, and are frightened of confrontation with that person.

“To be alerted in advance of their release from prison can give them some peace of mind.”

Mr MacAskill added: “Many crimes have a devastating and lasting effect on their victims.

“Making sure they are told about the release of the offender, for example, means they don’t have to suffer the nasty shock and distress of seeing them on the streets without warning.”

Ministers are also planning to create a national victim statement scheme, as The Scotsman revealed last August.

This will allow victims to tell the court about the impact a crime had on them.

• The Victim Support Scotland hotline is 0845 603 9213.

‘IT WOULD HAVE GIVEN ME PEACE OF MIND TO KNOW’

ROBERT Stewart believes every victim of violent crime should be entitled to know when their attacker is granted liberty.

The 51-year-old speaks from horrific experience.

On New Year’s morning last year, he was attacked by two men wielding a machete, as he waited to pick up friends from a party. He needed 36 stitches to the back of his head, and could easily have died.

What it did kill was his confidence; the normally outgoing character who ran a local youth football team suddenly could not bring himself to leave the house.

“I’m 99 per cent there, but for weeks I wouldn’t go out the front door. I was terrified,” Mr Stewart, from Paisley, said.

The perpetrators were put behind bars, but their sentences were too short to entitle him to be notified. “I really would have wanted to know. It’s hard to explain, but it would have given me some peace of mind just knowing when they are out,” he said.