The number of people sent to prison by Lincolnshire Magistrates has almost doubled in five years.
Nearly 2,000 more cases have gone through Magistrates’ courts in the same period.
A study by The Howard League shows that 619 of the 20,749 people before the courts in 2011 (three per cent) were given a custodial sentence.
This is up on the 336 (1.9 per cent) out of 18,991 cases in 2006.
Despite the significant increase, the number of people being sent to prison via Lincolnshire Magistrates’ courts is below the national average of 3.8 per cent.
Magistrates’ courts in England and Wales handed down almost 1.2million sentences to men, women and children during 2011, of which more than 46,000 were custodial.