Horrifying results of soft-touch justice

THE appalling ordeal endured by grandmother Linda McDonald and her family is beyond imagining.

While walking her dog, she fell victim to a barbaric attack that almost killed her.

Horrifyingly, the man who carried out this sickening assault had murdered a civil servant in a similar incident 16 years ago.

Robbie McIntosh struck again after being let out on home leave before the end of his sentence. That prison chiefs felt it was appropriate to release a murderer unsupervised is incomprehensible.

But it is a product of a soft-touch justice system that repeatedly puts the rights of criminals ahead of their victims.

Recent figures showed criminals had enjoyed nearly 50,000 days out of prison on home leave over the past three years – with scores of them reoffending.

Soon many of them will be allowed to go home over the Christmas holidays, which will only add to victims’ misery.

But it’s not as if prison is anything other than a holiday camp, as evidenced by the disturbing images we publish today from Saughton Prison in Edinburgh.

Killer John Reid and cellmate Michael Roberts used social media to share photographs – taken on an illegal phone – of themselves half naked.

Yesterday Scottish Prison Service chief executive Colin McConnell and Justice Secretary Michael Matheson had little to say about Mrs McDonald’s ‘justice journey’ – one that almost ended in her death.

The SNP should pay heed to the Tories’ call for whole-life sentences, where the worst criminals are kept in jail for the rest of their lives – and put a stop to home leave for violent killers such as McIntosh.