A heroin dealer and an attempted murderer were let out of prison on day release to watch 50 Shades of Gray at their local cinema. Roseanne McCreadie, 34, and Kim Gray, 47, were taken on the trip to the Vue Cinema in Stirling, Scotland, by former inmate Louise McLachlan, who met the pair in jail.

McLachlan was only recently released from Cornton Vale prison, where McCreadie and Gray are meant to be serving combined time of more than twelve years for drugs and violent offences.  McLachlan is supposed to be spending her time helping female convicts turn their lives around, but instead she bought the pair tickets to see an afternoon showing of the bondage film, the Scottish Daily Record has reported.

They organised the trip via Facebook, where McLachlan posted “Right my ladies just booked the tickets for 50shades on sunday at 12 at the vue, VIP seats of course, use [you] sort it out with CV & i’ll pick use up at 12 it finishes at 2.25 so use will make the 3hours no bother.”

McCreadie wrote back: “Brilliant lou look 4ward to that babe.”

Both are in the early stages of their sentences. McCreadie is just three years into a nine year sentence for helping her gangster father pour heroin into Scotland. She was described as a high ranking member of her father’s drugs cartel when she was sentenced at Liverpool Crown Court, along with twelve other gang members who between them were handed a total of 152 jail time.

The judge added an extra 28 days on top of that sentence for contempt of court as she yelled “ya bunch of c****” at the jury. Her father Eddie, who is said to have used previous prison sentences to “further his network” and had no compunction about involving his daughter in the family business, was sentenced to 12 years and eight months.

And Gray has served less than a year of her 40 month sentence for an unprovoked stabbing that left cab driver Joe Cameron nearly dead. Mr Cameron had been walking up to a customer’s door in Dunfermline in February last year when Gray stabbed him in the back, plunging the kitchen knife in right up to the hilt. Mr Cameron suffered a near-fatal heart attack following the stabbing.

“Gray is a danger to the public. She left me for dead,” Mr Cameron said, when her sentence was announced. “If it wasn’t for police and ambulance staff I wouldn’t be here. It was a completely random attack and it’s disgusting she’s only getting three-and-a-half years. I get flashbacks and find it hard to sleep. I feel like I’ve been left with a disability.”

Yet despite the severity of their crimes, both women get regular home leave. McCreadie has been granted a week home leave every month, although it is believed that her three hour trip to the cinema was granted as a special dispensation on top of that leave.

And last week she was involved in a car crash with a police vehicle when being driven by her friend John “Snaz” Adams to visit her father at another jail where he is serving time. The pair smashed into a police vehicle outside Glasgow.

Gray also gets regular home leave, but also had to ask for special dispensation for the cinema outing.

According to the Daily Record, the trio were “relaxed”, laughing and joking together as they arrived at the cinema. They shared a bag of sweets and passed around a mobile phone to check their Facebook accounts. When Gray was asked by a reporter whether she had enjoyed the film, and whether the prison service knew where she was, she replied “Yeah”, but would not comment further.

Conservative Member of the Scottish Parliament Margaret Mitchell told The Sun: “These were serious crimes. To get let out to go to the flicks is unacceptable.”

A spokesman for the Scottish Prison Service said: “We do not comment on individual prisoners.”