MORE than 200 jobs are to be scrapped within Fife Council as the ruling administration embarks on a three-year £21.8 million savings programme.

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.

THE case of a pensioner whose body lay undiscovered at his home for more than a year has raised “serious questions”, the First Minister said yesterday.

A dementia sufferer was dragged and pushed into a chair by a laughing nurse, a hearing heard.

A disc containing details of serious offenders was lost by the Crown Prosecution Service, it has been revealed.

Almost half the patients at the State Hospital at Carstairs, including several killers, are to be released to lower security institutions.

The chief executive of Scotland’s top security hospital has told The Herald how the institution plans to cut its bed numbers from 240 to 140 by 2011.

In an exclusive interview, Andreana Adamson revealed that male patients not requiring the high security of the State Hospital would be moved to medium secure units such as the Orchard Clinic in Edinburgh, which is part of the Royal Edinburgh, and the Rowanbank Clinic in Glasgow, on the Stobhill site.

In those units, they would be subject to less stringent rules and eventually allowed out on their own. Patients can be moved from Carstairs only if they are considered not to pose a major risk to the public.

The move follows concerns that, under the European Convention on Human Rights, patients kept in an “excessive” level of security could sue the government. It is also dictated by new national mental health policy to provide appropriate local services where possible.