These are the hardened criminals who did less jail time than Lucy Connolly, who served more than 300 days for a post on X.
The 42-year-old mother was pictured leaving HMP Peterborough in a taxi on Thursday before being spotted walking her dogs and reuniting with husband Ray, a Tory councillor.
She was jailed for 31 months for a tweet hastily written in the aftermath of the murders of children in Southport, Merseyside at a Taylor Swift-themed dance class last July.
The message was targeted at illegal migrants after false information spread in the wake of the murders claimed killer Axel Rudukabana was in the country illegally – he was in fact born in Cardiff to parents from Rwanda.
It said that people should ‘set fire to all the f*****g hotels full of the b*****ds for all I care’.
The former childminder has been locked up alongside murderers, drug dealers and thieves, with her punishment criticised by former prime ministers, the leader of the Conservative Party and a former home secretary for being unduly harsh.
Many seemingly more severe criminals, sentenced in recent years, have served less time than the ‘racist’ Twitter user.
These include paedophiles, rapists and terrorists who have all been deemed less of a danger.
Lucy Connolly, pictured in May, was jailed for 31 months for a tweet hastily written in the aftermath of the murders of children in Southport, Merseyside last July
She was pictured leaving HMP Peterborough in a taxi on Thursday before being spotted walking her dogs, pictured
Connolly is also the wife of Tory councillor Ray Connolly, pictured left. The news will come as a huge boost to her husband and 12-year-old daughter
BBC newsreader Huw Edwards avoided jail when sentenced in September 2024 having pleaded guilty to possessing indecent images of children, including 13 of the most serious category A and one of a child as young as seven.
He was handed a six-month sentence, suspended for two years, sparking outrage among campaign groups who branded it ‘ludicrous, absurd and embarrassing’.
The chief magistrate accepted Edwards’s claims he understood the severity of the case and had been responding to therapy.
Edwards was among the BBC’s highest-paid, with its accounts putting him in a pay bracket of between £475,000 and £479,999 for 2023/24. This was a £40,000 pay rise from 2022/23, when he was paid between £435,000 and £439,999.
The former news anchor also raked in an astonishing £200,000 between his arrest in November 2023 and his resignation on ‘medical grounds’ the following April after the discovery of indecent images of children in a WhatsApp chat.
At the time the Welshman was not dismissed despite some more senior BBC staff being aware of his arrest, with reports he paid a teenager £35,000 for sexual images later emerging last September.
Jac Davies, a paedophile who received child abuse images from the same source as Edwards, was handed a 12-month sentence, suspended for two years in December.
He pleaded guilty to possessing indecent images of children as well as class-A drugs.
BBC newsreader Huw Edwards avoided jail when sentenced in September 2024 having pleaded guilty to possessing indecent images of children
Edwards pictured in 2023. The chief magistrate accepted Edwards’s claims he understood the severity of the case and had been responding to therapy
The 25-year-old should avoid prison to achieve ‘parity’ with the disgraced BBC presenter, his defence lawyer told his sentencing hearing.
Davies was investigated after South Wales Police discovered he had been involved in the sharing of images with paedophile Alex Williams, who had also sent pictures to Edwards, Leeds Magistrates’ Court heard.
A few months earlier, Rees Newman dodged jail for a second time in a year after inititally being handed a suspended sentence for the historic rape of a child under the age of 14.
In 2023, he had the prison overcrowding crisis to thank for having his term suspended for two years.
But months later he breached the terms of his sentence by travelling to Egypt without telling officers and was dragged back into court.
He avoided time behind bars again last year.
The judge said: ‘The only reason you have escaped immediate custody today is because of the prison overcrowding crisis.’
Lab technician Charles Cannon was convicted of seven charges of possessing terrorist information but also dodged jail.
Rees Newman, pictured, dodged jail for a second time in a year after inititally being handed a suspended sentence for the historic rape of a child under the age of 14
Lab technician Charles Cannon, pictured, was convicted of seven charges of possessing terrorist information but also dodged jail
Mansoor Khan, pictured, who was found with more than 100 ‘abhorrent and perverted’ images of children on his mobile avoided jail, at a sentencing in 2023
He gathered documents on how to make homemade weapons and explosives and was said to have had ‘a dangerous mindset’ .
Cannon also spoke ‘enthusiastically of the stabbing of asylum seekers’ and information on how to make explosives was discovered on his mobile.
He was handed an 18-month prison sentence, suspended for two years, in Feburary 2024.
A court heard the lab technician repeated on many occasions anti-Semitic tropes’ and ‘said he would kill, when speaking about people of colour’.
Meanwhile, Daniel Ashbrook was found to have been physically, mentally and emotionally abusive to a woman across a three-year period.
The domestic abuser pleaded guilty to controlling and coercive behaviour in November 2024.
He was handed a 21-month jail sentence, suspended for two years, and also given a 10-year restraining order.
The woman revealed in a statement she was badly affected by Ashbrook’s behaviour that she doubted if she would ‘even be here today’ were it not for her family’s help.
Connolly pictured leaving prison on Thursday in a taxi
The mother, pictured, has spent more than nine months behind bars after admitting to making the inflammatory post on X in July last year
Mansoor Khan, who was found with more than 100 ‘abhorrent and perverted’ images of children on his mobile, avoided jail at a sentencing in 2023.
Instead he was given an eight-month prison term, suspended for two years.
The top NHS consultant, who was a father of four and coached a girls’ rugby team, was described as a ‘pillar of society’ before the revelations.
He downloaded an anonymous browser and accessed sites on the dark web to download dozens of ‘the most revolting’ photos of children as young as two, a court heard.
When police followed a digital trail from a Snapchat account and arrested him, the 54-year-old father of four claimed he wanted to protect his children from what they might find and was doing his ‘parental responsibility’ in accessing the dark web.
Rapist Nikhil Chopra pleaded guilty to sexual assault and indecent exposure but was only handed an 18-month sentence, suspended for two years in 2024.
He was arrested by police after officers received reports of the assault in Swindon in September 2023.
Members of the public got in contact with the force after they became concerned for the woman’s safety.
Riot police hold back protesters near a burning police vehicle after disorder broke out in Southport on July 30, 2024
Ray Connolly (centre) with supporters outside the Court of Appeal at the Royal Courts of Justice in central London
Serious violence and rioting by demonstrators broke out on the streets in Southport on July 30, 2024
The sex offender was instead ordered to complete 55 days of rehabilitation, 43 days in a sex-offending programme and told to pay a £187 victim surcharge.
Connolly’s imprisonment had prompted allegations that she was a victim of ‘two-tier justice’, with claims that those with Right-wing views are treated more harshly than others in the UK.
Sir Keir Starmer supported her conviction but it later emerged he had previously argued people who deleted offensive posts quickly should not necessarily face criminal action.
He said at the time: ‘I will always support the action taken by our police and courts to keep our streets and people safe.’
But 11 years prior, while director of public prosecutions he advocated a more lenient approach for those who showed ‘genuine remorse’ and took social media statements down swiftly.
He encouraged prosecutors to consider four factors where ‘a prosecution is unlikely to be both necessary and proportionate’.
This included if ‘swift and effective action has been taken by the suspect and/or others, for example service providers, to remove the communication in question or otherwise block access to it’.
He added that his list was ‘not exhaustive’.
Sir Keir Starmer, pictured in July, supported her conviction but it later emerged he had previously argued people who deleted offensive posts quickly should not necessarily face criminal action
In guidance repeated nearly verbatim in the most recent version available to prosecutors, Starmer said: ‘There’s a lot of stuff out there that is highly offensive that is put out on a spontaneous basis that is quite often taken down pretty quickly, and the view is that those sort of remarks don’t necessarily need to be prosecuted.
‘This is not a get out of jail card, but it is highly relevant. Stuff does go up on a Friday and Saturday night and come down the next morning.
‘Now if that is the case a lot of people will say that shouldn’t have happened, the person has accepted it, but really you don’t need a criminal prosecution. It is a relevant factor.’
Connolly was arrested on August 6, by which point she had deleted her social media account.
But other messages which included other damning remarks were uncovered by officers who seized her phone.
The Southport atrocity sparked nationwide unrest, with several people – including Connolly – jailed as a result.
Her tweet was viewed 310,000 times in three-and-a-half hours before she deleted it.
She later pleaded guilty to distributing material with the intention of stirring up racial hatred at Birmingham Crown Court and was sentenced to 31 months in prison in October.
In May, she had an appeal against her sentence refused by three Court of Appeal judges at the Royal Courts of Justice.
In a written judgement, Lord Justice Holroyde said: ‘There is no arguable basis on which it could be said that the sentence imposed by the judge was manifestly excessive.
‘The application for leave to appeal against sentence therefore fails and is refused.’
He added that the principal ground of appeal ‘was substantially based on a version of events put forward by the applicant which we have rejected’.
Connolly argued she had been ‘really angry’ after the Southport attacks, but hours after posting the rant on X realised it was not an acceptable thing to say, so deleted it.
She also said that news of the Southport murders had triggered her anxiety from when her baby son, Harry, died as the result of a hospital blunder 13 years earlier.
At her appeal case, Adam King, representing Connolly, asked if she had intended for anyone to set fire to asylum hotels or ‘murder any politicians’. She replied: ‘Absolutely not.’
Naeem Valli, for the prosecution, told the court the post was a reflection of her attitude towards immigrants.
Connolly’s case later became international news, with US officials saying earlier this year they are keeping tabs on developments over their ‘concerns’ about free speech.
A State Department spokesman said in May: ‘We can confirm that we are monitoring this matter. The United States supports freedom of expression at home and abroad, and remains concerned about infringements on freedom of expression.’
