A prisoner who absconded from Castle Huntly open prison has been sentenced to an additional nine months on top of a five-year sentence he is serving for firearms offences.
Peter Mowat (44) failed to return to the Longforgan open prison on December 18 after being allowed out on home leave.
Mowat was sentenced to five years in prison at the High Court in Glasgow in February 2010 and was transferred to Castle Huntly in November last year.
When he appeared in the dock at Perth Sheriff Court on Monday, Mowat admitted that on December 18 at Castle Huntly, having been granted home leave, he failed to return and attempted to defeat the ends of justice.
Depute fiscal Stuart Richardson said Mowat had two previous periods of home leave which had passed successfully. This time he was released on December 11 and was due to be picked up at the bus station in Glasgow on December 18 but failed to appear.
Defence solicitor Paul McCormick said Mowat handed himself into police in Glasgow on Saturday. He said difficulties at home had led to his failure to return.
”His mother has senile dementia and has been in a home for two months and, although he has visited her before, on this occasion his mother didn’t appear to know him,” said the solicitor. ”He found this particularly distressing.”
Mowat’s father had liver cancer and, as a result of spending a lot of time with his mother, he failed to return.
”He realised he was just causing problems for himself and family members and handed himself in,” Mr McCormick said.
The agent said his earliest release date was June 2013 but he realised he would be returned to the closed prison system.
Sentencing him to nine months’ jail consecutive to his current sentence, Sheriff Lindsay Foulis said if the open system was to work this kind of behaviour could not be tolerated.