Class justice: ‘Lock ’em up and throw away the key’

Jeremy Dewar looks at some of the most shocking riot-related sentences to date. Others will surely follow, as the crown courts start to deliver their sentences.
• Anderson Fernandes, 22, was charged with burglary in Manchester after he took two scoops of coffee ice cream and a cone from a delicatessen. He gave the cone away because he didn’t like the flavour. He is remanded in custody awaiting crown court and can expect jail.
• Nicolas Robinson, 23, a college student with no criminal record, was jailed for six months for stealing a £3.50 case of bottled water from Lidl. Robinson threw away the water when confronted by police but was arrested and quickly admitted what he had done.
• Jordan Blackshaw, 20, and Perry Sutcliffe-Keenan, 22, have been given 4 years in prison for attempts to incite riots on Facebook during recent riots. Blackshaw set up an “event” called Smash Down in Northwich Town but no one apart from the police, who were monitoring the page, turned up. Blackshaw was promptly arrested. Sutcliffe-Keenan
used his Facebook account to design a web page entitled The Warrington Riots. The court was told it caused a wave of panic in the town. When he woke up the following morning with a hangover, he removed the page and apologised, saying it had been a joke.
• Ursula Nevin, 24, who slept through the riots in Manchester, was jailed for five months because she accepted a pair of shorts looted by her flatmate. On appeal the sentence was reduced to 75 hours community service, showing that it is worth appealing.
• But perhaps the most disgusting case to date involves Dane Williamson,  who was accused of setting fire to Miss Selfridge’s. The police dropped the case but only after they had used Twitter to publish his address. When he returned home, Dane found his flat burned down and all his possessions destroyed in what appears to have been a revenge attack.