‘Low-level dealers get big jail terms’

TOO many low-level drug dealers are being handed down long sentences while criminal bosses continue to escape from the law, it has been claimed.

Liam Herrick, director of Irish Penal Reform Trust questioned if the right people were being sent to jail.

Mr Herrick was commenting on the latest statistics from the annual prison report, published last week, which show the number of people serving a sentence for drug offences in 2009 was 760, 34% higher than in 2008. They made up 22% of the prison population