‘I’m not sending a lady to jail’

IN THE past year, a string of young female defendants have been spared prison:

Student Karolina Szumko, 18, who attacked staff at a nightclub and shouted racist slurs at police, avoided jail after Hammersmith Magistrates’ Court deputy district judge Adrian Turner told her: ‘I’m not sending a lady to prison for something like this.’ Szumko was sentenced to 150 hours of community service.

A former private schoolgirl who helped her brother supply cocaine to students was spared jail after arguing it would blight her future career. In October last year, Poppy Murray, 22, was handed a 12-month sentence suspended for 18 months at Minshull Street Crown Court in Manchester.

Oxford University student Lavinia Woodward, 24, who stabbed her boyfriend last December, may be spared prison after Oxford Crown Court judge Ian Pringle said she had an ‘extraordinary’ talent for medicine. Woodward is due to be sentenced next month.

A mother who locked her sevenyear-old daughter alone in their flat all weekend so she could have sex with her lover was spared jail after claiming she was breast-feeding. The defendant, who cannot be named, had admitted four counts of child neglect.