SENTENCING STATEMENTS

On sentencing, Lord Arthurson said:

"Andrew Harkins, on 15 October 2024 at Glasgow High Court you were convicted after trial on the unanimous verdicts of the jury of a catalogue of extremely serious offending against five women.  This offending, committed by you between 2004 and 2021, encompassed threatening and abusive behaviour, stalking, offences of violence up to and including assault to injury, permanent disfigurement and danger of life, together with a litany of grave sexual offences including the rape by you of three of the complainers, and, in respect of one of them, the violent sexual penetration of her with a glass bottle.

In the course of the index offending you compressed the neck of one of your victims to the point that she lost consciousness, and you used lit cigarettes and a knife as weapons against that complainer.  You repeatedly raped the same complainer at various addresses in Glasgow over a period of 4 years.  In addition on one occasion you violently penetrated her vagina with a glass bottle.  As you did so you laughed at your victim and told her that you just wanted to hear her scream.  You repeatedly raped another victim over a period of months, on one occasion posting a social media message about selling her.  You additionally raped another victim on one occasion.  The tenor and content of the whole evidence led conveyed an escalating pattern of coercive controlling behaviour which evolved into violence and sexual violence.  The abuse by you of alcohol was a prevalent theme associated with your commission of these appalling crimes.

The criminal justice social work report and risk assessment which was made available for a previous sentencing diet in November 2024 makes for very depressing reading.  You throughout engaged in victim blaming, using derogatory and condescending language about your victims.  With regard to the crime of sexual assault by penetration with the bottle, referred to earlier in these remarks, you told the author of the report that you “wouldn’t waste a bottle on her” and proceeded to describe your victim in highly offensive terms.  When the author read each of the charges to you, you appeared amused.  You made inappropriate comments throughout the interview process.  You repeatedly attempted to control the direction of the interview, the reporter advises.  You displayed little if any victim empathy and repeatedly minimised the seriousness and impact of your offending behaviour.  Overall, my impression is one of a consistently callous aspect to your approach to these convictions.  The author of the background report has assessed you as presenting a high risk of serious harm to adult females, particularly future partners.  Unsurprisingly in the whole circumstances, there was a very strong recommendation before the court from the reporter that you be supervised and closely monitored upon your eventual release into the community.

In these circumstances, at that sentencing diet on 12 November 2024, the court made a risk assessment order in terms of section 210B of the Criminal Procedure (Scotland) Act 1995 and adjourned for the preparation of a risk assessment report prepared by an RMA accredited risk assessor. That report is now available. The author has concluded that you clearly present as someone who presents an enduring propensity to seriously endanger the lives and well being of your partners or ex-partners. On the basis that there is some evidence that indicates that you are amenable to change with time and intervention, and having weighed the arguments for and against the relevant definitions of high and medium risk, the reporter has reached the view that you most closely fit with the medium definition of risk. You are assessed as presenting with some borderline and dependent personality traits, a probable diagnosis of borderline personality disorder having been achieved. You fall below the diagnostic cut-off score for psychopathy. There was definite evidence of, inter alia, lack of remorse and impulsivity, and partial evidence in respect of, inter alia, lack of empathy, poor behavioural controls and parasitic lifestyle. The key characteristics underpinning your seriously harmful criminal behaviour are deemed to be, again inter alia, entitlement, alcohol use and impulsivity. The reporter observes that you have not previously been managed under an extended licence and notes what is described by her as some tentative evidence that you are amenable to change and have the capacity and willingness to engage in interventions. The assessor concludes that it is possible that a suitably lengthy extended sentence, proportionate to your index offending, would give you sufficient time to engage in intervention of the right intensity while in custody whilst also providing a level of assurance via future social work involvement that you will be supervised and monitored well into the future. Detailed recommendations in respect of your future risk management have very helpfully been set out in the body of the risk assessment report.

You are now aged 47.  You have to date accrued some 19 groups of previous convictions.  You have been the subject of 9 prior custodial sentences.  Your criminal antecedents are analogous to the extent that 16 of your convictions are domestically aggravated offences, including assault, stalking and threatening and abusive behaviour.  I observe that your criminal record is sufficiently loaded with red flags in respect of domestic abuse that I take the unusual step of expressing my surprise that you were granted bail at petition stage.

I have listened with care to the submissions advanced this morning in mitigation on your behalf by your senior counsel, and take into account in particular what has so cogently been said by him regarding consideration by the court of an extended sentence and the particular protective features of an extended licence period and notification requirements, as a package, offering a rehabilitation prospect and protection of the public, all in the context of your age at the likely date of your future release.

Turning now to disposal, it is plain that the primary sentencing issue in this case crystallises in the following formulation, namely whether the risk criteria expressed in section 210E of the Criminal Procedure (Scotland) Act 1995 Act have been established, and whether you can accordingly properly be located within that cohort of exceptional offenders for whom an order for lifelong restriction is the only appropriate disposal. Notwithstanding the risk assessor’s conclusion that there is some evidence that you are amenable to change and the, albeit qualified, observations which the reporter makes regarding the imposition of an extended sentence, and indeed the fact that you have not previously been made the subject of such a post custodial period of supervision, it remains the position that the author of the risk assessment report has further concluded that you clearly present as someone who presents an enduring propensity to seriously endanger the lives and well-being of your partners or ex-partners.

In the whole circumstances I have reached the view, as the trial judge in your case, having regard to the scope, duration and gravity of your index offending in this case, your criminal antecedents and the whole risk assessment material now before the court, including the criminal justice social work report and risk assessment and the RMA accredited risk assessor’s report, that the nature, gravity and pattern of your offending behaviour are such as to demonstrate that there is indeed a likelihood that you, if at liberty, will seriously endanger the physical or psychological well-being of members of the public at large, in particular the  cohort group of future intimate partners and ex-partners.

You subjected your five victims to highly manipulative, controlling and coercive behaviour.  This offending had as its object the degradation and humiliation of these women.  You appeared on occasion to enjoy inflicting torment upon them.  The suffering of your victims, in particular those women whom you subjected to abhorrent sexual violence, has and will continue to be life changing for each of them.  These crimes were of course committed against a background of your chronic domestically abusive criminal history.  

Turning now therefore to disposal, in the whole circumstances I propose to sentence you on this indictment as follows.  You will serve on all of the charges on this indictment, on an in cumulo basis, an order for lifelong restriction.  That order constitutes a sentence of imprisonment for an indeterminate period. The court also requires to set what is referred to as the punishment part of your sentence, being the period which you must spend in full in prison before you can apply to be released on licence. Had I not been imposing this order by way of the presently proposed disposal, the notional headline custodial term of the determinate sentence which I would have selected on this indictment, on an in cumulo basis, would have been one of 15 years. That notional period breaks down as follows.  Approaching the charges individually, I attribute 11 years to charge 11.  Concurrent with that period I attribute 6 years to charge 16.  Consecutive to that 6 year period, a further period of 5 years is attributed to charge 18.  Consecutive to these two total concurrent periods of 11 years, I attribute a period of 4 years to charge 9.  Concurrent with that 4 year period, and on an in cumulo basis, I attribute a period of 4 years to charges 3, 6, 8, 12, 14, 17 and 20.  This approach returns a notional headline custodial period of 15 years. Having, by the adoption of that approach, taken into account the sentencing principle of totality, I record that the part of this notional headline custodial tariff of 15 years which would represent an appropriate period to satisfy the sentencing requirements of retribution and deterrence is in my view 14 years. Finally, having applied the well understood statutory formula, I confirm that the punishment part of this disposal will accordingly be fixed at 7 years.

You should understand clearly, however, that the sentence imposed by the court today is not a sentence of 7 years imprisonment. It is instead an order for lifelong restriction, which is a sentence of imprisonment for an indeterminate period. You will not be eligible to apply for parole until the punishment part has been concluded, and you must on no account assume that you will automatically be released at that time. You will be released only when the Parole Board for Scotland determines that it is no longer necessary for the protection of the public that you should be confined in prison. When you are released, if indeed you are ever released, is in law a matter for the Parole Board in due course.

The sentence imposed today will be backdated to 15 October 2024, being the date of your conviction and remand into custody in these proceedings.

The court additionally today, on unopposed Crown motion, pronounces non-harassment orders in respect of all of the complainers named in these charges. You will not approach or contact any of them, in any manner whatsoever, or attempt to do so, for an indefinite period.

Finally, I confirm that you will, in respect of the sexual offence convictions on this indictment, henceforth be subject to the notification requirements contained in Part 2 of the Sexual Offences Act 2003, also for an indefinite period."