CAN there be any mitigation that will prevent Colin Meek from receiving a maximum sentence of ten years in prison?

Yesterday he admitted causing the death of six-year-old Leonie Shaw by dangerous driving. The judge will pass sentence on him in three weeks time having considered social services reports.

But the judge, Peter Fox, will also have to bear in mind what he told Meek the last time he was up before him: "I regard you as a dangerous person." That was when Meek was found guilty of stabbing a man in the back. It was in October 1999, and Mr Fox sentenced him to four years in prison. But two-and-a-half years later, Meek was out, and free to show exactly how dangerous a person he really is.

Mr Fox will now have to bear in mind that before him in the dock is a man who knowingly drove a car on which the brakes were so faulty that when faced by an emergency he chose to pull on the handbrake rather than pump the defective foot brake.

He will have to bear in mind that Meek is a man who is so reckless with human life that he put his girlfriend and her two-year-old daughter in a car that had just five per cent of one brake working.

He will have to bear in mind that this is a man who has such contempt for the rest of society that, even though he is 34, he has never passed his driving test.

And he will have to bear in mind Meek's record of violence and drugs.

Having weighed all this up, if Mr Fox has any doubts, he will have to bear in mind the most appalling aspect of this sorry case. Meek is a man who, knowing he had caused serious injury to a six-year-old girl, chose to get back into his car and drive off rather than offer his tiny victim any assistance. He chose to save his own skin and left Leonie to die on the road.

Justice has to be done for Leonie and her bereaved family. It also has to be done on behalf of the public as a whole who require protection from such a habitually dangerous man.

It is time to throw the book at Colin Meek.