NICOLA Sturgeon has been accused of trying to “empty Scotland’s jails” after refusing to make it an automatic offence to remove an electronic tag.

The First Minister was attacked by Scottish Tory leader Ruth Davidson, who said most people would not regard the SNP’s decision as justice.

Ms Davidson said the Scottish Government was ignoring concerns expressed by Scottish Women’s Aid and Victim Support Scotland about electronic tags.

Given electronic monitoring was used as an alternative to prison, cutting off a tag was akin to “scaling the prison walls and making a run for it”, and should be punished as such.

In a stormy First Minister’s Questions, Ms Sturgeon defended her new Management of Offenders Bill, saying it would make Scotland safer through “smarter justice”.

She said the Tory plan failed to consider tags being damaged accidentally “in the course of employment or carrying out sporting activities”.

Justice Secretary Humza Yousaf said Ms Davidson was talking “rubbish”.

The row followed MSPs passing two new pieces of justice legislation earlier this week.

On Tuesday, the Management of Offenders Bill was approved by 82 votes to 26, extending the scope for using electronic tags to monitor offenders in the community.

READ MORE: Expansion of electronic tagging branded ‘ruse to empty prisons’

The next day, the presumption against courts imposing short jail sentences was extended from three to 12 months, meaning thousands more offenders on community sentences.

Both measures were opposed by Tory MSPs, who demanded that removal of an electronic tag should be an automatic offence to deter criminals going on the run.

At FMQs, Ms Davidson raised the case of Craig McLelland, who was stabbed to death at the age of 31 in Paisley in 2017 by repeat offender James Wright.

Wright, whose 16 previous convictions included two for knife crime, had been “unlawfully at large” for five months after removing his electronic tag while on home detention curfew.

Ms Davidson said: “It is two years since father-of-three Craig McClelland was stabbed to death by James Wright, a criminal who was unlawfully at large for months after tampering with his electronic tag.

"This week Mr McClelland's father said this: 'Why was James Wright out on a tag, how did he get it off and why wasn't he lifted? Where was the system when my son was murdered and why won't they answer my questions?'

"First Minister, what are you going to tell Mr McClelland about why cutting off a tag isn't a crime?"

Ms Sturgeon said the Management of Offenders Bill created an offence of being “unlawfully at large” which would see people on home detention curfew recalled to custody, although not offenders given community sentences who might cut off a tag.

READ MORE: MSPs back bill which extends use of electronic tagging

She said: “That approach gives the police more powers to apprehend prisoners who are considered to be unlawfully at large, including where they have tampered with their electronic tag.

“The proposals from the Tories this week did not have robust provisions around them. So, for example, somebody who damaged a tag in the course of employment or carrying out sporting activities, would be committing an offence with no appropriate defence in law.”

She said Mr McLelland’s murder had been a “dreadful tragedy and crime” and one of the reasons the new offence of being unlawfully at large had been created.

She said: "The case is one of the reasons why we considered the matter and decided to legislate this week to put that specific crime on the statute book

She rejected Ms Davidson’s premise that there was a “soft on crime approach” in Scotland.

She said: “Nothing could be further from the truth. Right now Scotland has the highest prison population in western Europe. It’s not the problem that we don’t send enough people to prison, the problem is we’re not smart enough in terms of the justice interventions.

However Ms Davidson said the Scottish Government’s provisions did not go far enough, and asked Ms Sturgeon if making tag removal an automatic offence had been discounted “just because it was a Tory suggestion”.

READ MORE: Holyrood approves presumption against prison sentences of up to a year

She said: "The SNP says that it wants to start emptying the jails and to let lots of people who would have been in prison out on the streets, wearing tags instead. "

"In my view, taking off a tag is equivalent to scaling the walls and making a run for it because, but for that tag, the person would be in a cell.

"Under the SNP’s new system, all that will happen is that the person will be sent a letter asking whether they would mind turning themselves in, please.

"A person cutting off their tag is not automatically a crime, and no extra penalty will be added to their sentence. Does the First Minister think that that sounds like justice to most people?"

Ms Sturgeon said: “What we have seen this week... is this Government introducing reforms to the justice system that will make our country safer, because it is about smarter justice.

"It is exactly the kind of reforms that [Ms Davidson’s] colleagues south of the border are pursuing themselves."

In its submission to MSPs last year on the Offenders Bill, Scottish Women’s Aid said that “to be a credible deterrent, breach of the EM [electronic monitoring] condition must be an automatic criminal offence”.

Asked later what sport criminals might be playing to damage their tags, the First Minister’s official spokesman said later: “Ruth Davidson’s point seemed to be that if a tag comes off, under any and all circumstances, it should be a crime.

“The law that we’ve introduced is a bit more sensible, a bit more considered, and makes it very clear that if somebody takes off a tag."