The Scottish Parliament debate on "Scotland's Choice: Report of the Scottish Prisons Commission" centred on a proposal to cut Scotland's prison population by three thousand prisoners.

But local Labour MSP Cathie Craigie argues that such targets should not be achieved at a cost of poor sentencing decisions and the use of open estate prisons to ease overcrowding.

Cathie Craigie MSP said:

"The Commission's findings prove the serious failures in the prisoner management of Robert Foye."

"A long-term prisoner, who had committed a serious violent crime, failed a prison drugs test and who had previously absconded from an open prison should not have been transferred to Castle Huntly, from where he was able to escape and rape a young constituent."

"This case and the Commission's findings should be a stark reminder that Robert Foye is exactly the kind of prisoner that prisons exist to punish, hold securely, risk-assess accurately and rehabilitate effectively."

"Future decisions on prisons should focus on security and classification, and I call on the minister to ensure that decisions focus more on the risk of harm that prisoners pose to the public. Risk of harm to the public and not targets and tick-box exercises must be the consideration in all decisions to imprison an individual."

According to the Scottish Prison Commission's report:

"Though there is no doubt that the Scottish Prison Service made mistakes in its management of Robert Foye. In many respects his case provides a stark and tragic example of why imprisoning too many people makes the community less safe rather than more safe. In recent years, the open estate has been used to ease overcrowding as well as to prepare long-term prisoners for release."

"There is evidence in the SPS internal report on the Robert Foye case that there were problems in communication and record-keeping both within the prison and between community-based social work services and the prison service (about his home circumstances)."

"It appears that the decision-making in this case focussed too much on Foye's security classification and too little on the risk of harm that he posed to the public. These weaknesses in systems and practices arose despite the fact that Robert Foye was a long-term prisoner who had already committed a serious violent crime, who had already absconded once from the open estate, who had failed a drug test in prison, and in respect of whom there was intelligence that he had threatened to offend. In short, he was exactly the kind of prisoner that we believe that prisons exist to punish, to hold securely, to risk assess accurately and to rehabilitate effectively. Risk assessment and rehabilitation are not perfect processes: Not all risks are predictable and it is far from easy to rehabilitate serious offenders. But in the Robert Foye case, these processes failed - with dreadful consequences."