ONE of the region's most senior judges and a teenage drug dealer's MP last night joined the row over whether he should have been jailed after being caught with hundreds of pounds of heroin.

Redcar MP Vera Baird, who is also a barrister, said Crown Court judge Guy Whitburn was wrong to spare Thomas Scarth custody because prisons were full.

The Recorder of Middlesbrough, Judge Peter Fox, said courts had not been ordered to give offenders more lenient sentences because of prison populations.

The Northern Echo reported yesterday how Judge Whitburn gave 19-year-old Scarth a suspended sentence and community punishment after he admitted possessing heroin with intent to supply.

Last night, Ms Baird said figures from the Prison Service "show clearly" that there are 3,749 places in jails throughout the country.

She said: "There are spaces in the North to which this man could have been sent - and it sounds as if he should have been sent there."

Scarth, of Roseberry Road, Redcar, east Cleveland, was caught by undercover police on July 8, last year, with 83 wraps of heroin.

A month earlier, he was fined £100 at Teesside Magistrates' Court after he admitted possession of heroin.

Scarth's barrister, David Lamb, began his mitigation by accepting custody for his client was inevitable.

But Judge Whitburn said: "The jails are full to overflowing... and we are urged not to imprison young men for offences of this nature if they are of a comparatively minor scale."

Scarth was given a 12-month sentence, suspended for 18 months, probation supervision and ordered to carry out 100 hours of community punishment.

Judge Fox said: "There has been no such communication or direction from any official in Government, or from any minister or from any senior member of the judiciary for judges like me or Judge Whitburn to take the prison population into account."

Judge Whitburn said in a statement that sentencing decisions reflected the full range of evidence presented to the court, as well as a variety of other factors, such as mitigating circumstances.