Outraged residents want Prime Minister Gordon Brown to review the case of three-year-old Tiffany Wright, who died after being starved and developing pneumonia, and give judges the right to jail people for longer.

On the first day alone the online petition was signed by more than 40 people.

It was set up after Tiffany's mum Sabrina Hirst, aged 22, was jailed for 12 years after admitting manslaughter and her husband Robert, 44, was sentenced to five years for child cruelty.

Sabrina will be out of prison in less than six years and Robert will be out in two because of the time they spent in custody waiting for their cases to reach court and the fact that they only have to serve half of their sentences behind bars.

The petition describes the sentences as "a betrayal" to Tiffany's life.

It calls for Mr Brown to review the case and "provide true justice, not only for Tiffany, but for other children subject to this type of horrendous and cruel treatment and who have their lives taken as a result."

The Hirsts ran the Scarbrough Arms pub on Addy Street, Upperthorpe, and regularly starved Tiffany and left her locked upstairs without supervision while they went out or worked.

She lived in squalor in a flat littered with dog faeces and in the week before her death was ill in bed but left uncared for and without food or water for at least the last 20 hours of her life.

The little girl was severely malnourished and had barely put on any weight over the last year of her life.

She lay dead without anyone noticing for two days.

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