SHOPLIFTER GETS SEASONAL WISH - TIME IN JAIL

A SHOPLIFTER has been given the late Christmas present he desperately begged the courts for... being sent back to prison.

Christopher Rice was handed a community order for criminal damage at a shop in Nottingham, but the very day he was sentenced he walked free from court and tried to steal again.

Southern Derbyshire Magistrates’ Court heard he entered Tesco in Long Eaton and tried to stuff a DVD down his trousers. When he was confronted by a security officer, he then started kicking out at a glass door, telling the worker he “wanted to be arrested”.

And when he came to court the 41-year-old’s barrister told magistrates his client wanted to be sent back to jail.

In response, magistrates told the defendant: “The matter of wanting to have a roof over your head for the winter is not the first time this has happened in the courts and won’t be the last. It is not a shopping list sentencing exercise.

“But you have been recalled for 28 days on a previous sentence and while this is not the Christmas present many would wish for, it might be the one you hoped for.”

Peter Bettany, prosecuting, said Rice, of no fixed address, walked free from Nottingham Magistrates’ Court on December 29, having been handed a community order for criminal damage at a shop.

He said at 11.50pm the same day the defendant was spotted in Tesco in Waverley Street, trying to hide a DVD down his trousers.

Mr Bettany said: “He was challenged about it and refused to leave the shop saying he wanted to be arrested. The security guard said the defendant then started kicking a glass fire door. He said he was kicking it so hard he thought it was going to smash. The police were called and the defendant was arrested and told them he did what he did because he was ‘p***** off’.”

Rice pleaded guilty to theft and attempted criminal damage - the glass fire door did not smash.

David Cusack, mitigating, said: “He was released from his last spell in prison last week and was given accommodation in a low-grade hotel in Nottingham. Things started to go wrong straight away with his methadone script not being available for him until January 12 and his life soon began to spiral again. He was back to square one, he was frustrated, he was trying to get arrested and he says he wants to be sent back to prison.”

Magistrates jailed Rice for four weeks and told him to pay £85 prosecution costs and a £1238 victim surcharge.