A man who encouraged more than 150 people to take part in the summer riots last year has been jailed for three years and three months.

Sam Lowe, from Sneinton, Nottingham, had earlier pleaded guilty to encouraging violent disorder.

The 21-year-old sent text messages to 160 people to join the disorder in Nottingham city centre.

In one message, Lowe implied he was involved in the rioting and had "a bin full of bricks the Feds aren't on it".

Another message to his friends read: "Girls, grannies, mums, dads, lads, grandads - everyone meet on Sneinton Dale tonight at 9 o'clock as we are all going to kick off... come with bricks."

Lowe was given the maximum sentence given his guilty plea.

The judge acknowledged Lowe had previously done a lot of good in his community and had been given a volunteer of the year award.

However, he told Lowe: "What you did, potentially, you took a large amount away from your community."

As he was sentenced, members of Lowe's family wept in court but the defendant showed no reaction.

Rich Henson, from Nottinghamshire Police, said the conviction was a real accomplishment for the force.

"BlackBerry Messenger, or BBM, is not your standard mobile communication. It is an instant messenger service and much more secure than an ordinary text message," he said.

"That is why Lowe's conviction is a particularly great result for the force, demonstrating some first-class work by our digital investigation unit.

"Not only did we manage to gain access to Lowe's BlackBerry Messenger messages, we were able to retrieve his deleted messages, which are also very difficult to recover due to rigorous security settings," he said.

"Let this be a clear warning to those criminals out there who think they are safe using BlackBerrys to orchestrate or commit crime. There is no where to hide."

So far, under Nottinghamshire Police's Operation Constantia, 141 people have been arrested and 87 of them charged in connection with last August's violent disorder in Nottingham.