Judge Tony Lancaster told Aaron Harmer the courts should use their sentencing powers to put a stop to knife crime, to hammer home the message it will not be tolerated.

But the judge then sentenced 21-year-old Harmer – who was caught on CCTV brandishing a knife at a shopkeeper and hurling racial abuse – to 12 months imprisonment, before suspending the jail term.

Today, the mum of murder victim Glen Corner, who was stabbed to death on his 16th birthday in Harton, South Shields, last August, slammed the sentence as "lousy."

Susanne Hilton, who backed the Gazette's recent Knives Ruin Lives campaign, said: "I have said this all along, a knife in the wrong hands is a death waiting to happen.

"This could have so easily resulted in someone being seriously injured or even killed.

"The judge should have made an example out of him. I thought the courts were going to get tough on people carrying knives but this sentence is just lousy.

"He was not just carrying a knife, he was using it to threaten. How can they let him walk?"

Newcastle Crown Court heard how Harmer was chased from Fielding Court shops, in Biddick Hall, on January 27 after he was caught trying to steal a £15 crate of beer.

Harmer, of Whiteleas Way, South Shields, then returned to the Biddick Hall Liquor store armed with a large knife.

Harmer stood outside the store and waved the black-handled kitchen knife, while hurling racial slurs at the shopworkers inside.

Nobody was hurt during the incident, but shop staff and members of the public were terrified.

One witness said Harmer had been acting "like a madman" during the incident and two girls are seen on CCTV fleeing from him.

Harmer admitted racially aggravated harassment and theft at an earlier hearing and was back in court to learn his fate yesterday.

But despite the tough talk from the judge, Harmer was allowed to walk free.

Judge Lancaster - who also allowed a drug dealer to walk free from court yesterday because the prisons are too full - told Harmer: "One of the matters that concerns courts presently is the fact young people like you seem to arm yourselves with knives for the slightest excuse in order to threaten or actually harm other people.

"It is becoming a matter of grave concern to courts, the occasions when youths are involved in knife crime.

"In my view the time has come where the court should use its sentencing powers to put a stop to it, otherwise nobody is going to get the message that the courts won't tolerate behaviour involving knives, whether threatening with a knife or using a knife."

Harmer was sentenced to 12 months imprisonment, but suspended the jail term for 12 months with supervision.

The judge told him: "Having regard to the fact one is talking here of a relatively short sentence, it is sensible to suspend it to give you the opportunity to work with the probation service."

Defence barrister Bob Spragg said Harmer has been out of trouble since the incident and has little recollection of what happened that night.

Judge Lancaster also let a clubber who sold Ecstasy to pals walk free yesterday because the prisons are too full.

Michael Minto could have faced years behind bars after being caught with a stash of 34 pills at Blue Bamboo in Sunderland on March 19.

But Judge Tony Lancaster told the 24-year-old all the prisons were full and the Court of Appeal warned not to sentence people to prison where "crowded conditions make matters worse for everyone".

He added: "There just aren't enough places to put everybody, and what one has to ask oneself in cases such as yours, is is it really necessary to send you to prison right away?"

Minto, of Pennymore Square, Pennywell, Sunderland, was sentenced to 12 months imprisonment, suspended for 12 months with a community order after he admitted possessing a class a drug with intent.