A top sheriff has launched a scathing attack on a “nameless official” who freed a prisoner less than a third of the way into his sentence for a catalogue of crimes.
Jason Jarvie, 20, was locked up for 15 months on March 14 last year for a string of offences including violence, dishonesty, public disorder and drugs misuse.
But he was allowed out on a home curfew order on August 3 2007 after just four-and-a-half months behind bars – despite having a history of repeatedly breaching court orders to curb his freedom.
Within weeks, “mindless” Jarvie went on to cause £150 worth of damage to a house in Airdrie, while still on probation and subject to the order.
Sheriff Robert Dickson, president of the Sheriffs’ Association, yesterday blasted the “nameless official” who freed Jarvie without knowing all the facts of the case.
He also warned he could not assure the public that they would be protected if sheriffs’ decisions were overruled in such a way.
Sitting at Airdrie Sheriff Court, he told the repeat offender: “At a time when society was entitled to expect that the court’s 15-month sentence would allow some respite from your repeated criminal activities, when you should have been incarcerated and innocent homeowners should have been protected from your mindless behaviour, some nameless official has chosen to ignore a judicial decision, to turn an apparent blind eye to your past record of ignoring curfews and to allow you the freedom to damage the property of somebody you did not know.
“I and every other sheriff can no longer give any assurance to the public that they are going to be protected for any particular period if our decisions can be overruled by a person who has neither heard the facts of the case nor had any input to the judicial decision to select a particular length of custody.”
He added it could have come as “little surprise” to anybody that Jarvie defied the order, in light of his past disregard for them.
Jarvie, from Coatbridge, admitted causing malicious damage to a house on Howletnest Road, Airdrie, on October 1 last year.
He threw paint on to the house’s front windows and the garden path, scrawling the words “grass” and “young mob”.
Sheriff Dickson deferred sentence to July 9 to allow an up-to-date probation report to be prepared.
Tory justice spokesman Bill Aitken said the case showed we are living in a “soft-touch Scotland”.
A Scottish Government spokesman insisted home detention curfew was not a “get-out-of-jail” pass.
Both Labour and the Liberal Democrats called on the justice secretary to order an investigation into the case.
A courts spokeswoman later confirmed Sheriff Dickson was not the sheriff who imposed the original 15-month sentence.