Their sentences range from three years to 15 years.
Some of these criminals owned up to their crimes through guilty pleas, while others were convicted following a Sheffield Cown Court trial.
All of them have been taken off South Yorkshire’s streets, after Sheffield judges deemed it necessary to pass down an immediate custodial sentence during hearings held during the last two weeks of December 2024 and the first two weeks of January 2025.

1. Jailed at Sheffield Crown Court between December 2024 and January 2025
The six men pictured here have all been jailed during Sheffield Crown Court hearings held over the last month. Top row, left to right: Anthony Millwood; Billy Clark and Laurence Ward. Bottom row, left to right: Mitchell Bilson; John March and Steven Silkstone | SYP/3rd party

2. Anthony Millwood: Convicted Barnsley sex offender flouted court order to rape 12-year-old girl twice
Anthony Millwood’s first sex offence conviction saw him receive a sentence of three years’ imprisonment in a young offenders’ institute in 2015 for offences of sexual activity with a child, inciting a child to engage in sexual activity and meeting a child following grooming. He committed all three offences the previous year, in 2024, Sheffield Crown Court heard. As part of Millwood’s sentence, he received a decade-long sexual harm prevention order, the purpose of which was to restrict his contact with children and limit his use of the internet, in a bid to stop him from committing further sexual offences. Millwood, now aged 28, breached numerous parts of the order, however, to commit his next set of offences on June 26, 2024, when he twice raped a 12-year-old girl he had been communicating with over Facebook, after the pair met up outside a branch of Primark. Millwood’s account, which has been accepted by prosecutors and corroborated through the messages they exchanged, is that the girl told him she was 17; and he only found out her true age when he was arrested. The judge, Recorder Richard Thyne KC, told Millwood, however, that as a 12-year-old child, ‘she was not capable of consenting and the offence you committed is one of rape of a child under 13’. Jailing Millwood for six years, Recorder Thyne continued: “I’m sentencing you on your basis of plea that you believed she was 17. Your lack of maturity and your previous convictions demonstrate that you have an interest in teenage girls.” In addition to handing Millwood a six year prison sentence, Recorder Thyne also imposed a one-year extended licence, bringing his total sentence to one of seven years. Millwood was also made the subject of a new sexual harm prevention order, which will remain in place until further order of the court. He was also told he must remain on the sex offenders’ register, and subject to notification requirements, until further order of the court. | SYP

3. Billy Clark: 'Cynical' Sheffield criminal stashed gun & ammunition above boiler at ex-girlfriend's home
23-year-old Billy Clark and the complainant were in a romantic relationship for around four months, and after they parted ways, the pair remained in ‘regular contact’ to discuss care for the complainant’s dog, Sam Jones, prosecuting, told Sheffield Crown Court. Mr Jones revealed how Clark’s civil treatment of the complainant came to an end after his new girlfriend took ‘umbrage’ over the pair’s continuing contact. Clark subsequently made a number of threats to the complainant, and also demanded that she retrieve his gun from her home and bring it to him, a hearing held on January 13, 2025 heard. “She had no idea the gun was being stored there…the defendant replied making further threats, this time towards the dog,” Mr Jones said, adding: “She contacted the police and they carried out a search of the property.” During the course of the search on May 6, 2024, police officers found the ‘component parts of a pen gun,’ along with two .22 Long Rifle calibre cartridges of ammunition stashed in a shelf above the complainant’s boiler. Sending Clark to begin the mandatory minimum five-year prison sentence that possession of a firearm carries, Judge Graham Reeds KC told him: “The exploitation of your ex-girlfriend was a cynical move, which put her at risk of a long sentence.” | SYP

4. Laurence Ward: Abused Rotherham husband, 58, 'snapped' and killed wife after 'years of merciless bullying'
Laurence Ward, aged 58, was arrested after the body of his wife Joanne, 53, was found with three stab wounds at their flat in Herringthorpe Valley Road on June 21, 2024. But at his sentencing at Sheffield Crown Court on December 19, 2024, a picture was painted of a man who had suffered years of physical, verbal and emotional abusive by Joanne - culminating with her stabbing him through the forearm with a large kitchen knife. Her husband claims he remembers very little of what happened next, but evidence showed he then fetched another knife from the kitchen and fatally wounded her. Prosecutors originally charged Laurence Ward with murder, but later accepted a guilty plea to manslaughter by way of loss of control. The judge said: “I am entirely satisfied that you suffered from what a psychiatric report called ‘battered husband syndrome’ - which is a sub branch of PTSD. “You never responded. You just endured it. And finally she carried out a tremendously serious attack on you.” Laurence Ward was sentenced to three years and four months in prison for manslaughter. | SYP