By Staff Reporter

Last updated at 11:33, Friday, 10 August 2012

A man who got away with £2,400 from a cash box after burgling private rooms at a pub has been jailed for 20 months.

Paul McCracken, 29, was with his girlfriend when he went upstairs in the Bounty pub in Finkle Street, Workington.

The pair, who at the time were staying with friends nearby, were arrested because after the theft the police watched the pub's CCTV footage, which had caught the pair on the stairs – somewhere they had no right to be.

In November last year McCracken, who had no fixed address, was spared jail for the burglary, and instead was ordered to do unpaid community work.

But that sentence was rescinded yesterday when he broke the terms of it by failing to do the work required of him – and by committing two further offences, this time of shoplifting.

Prosecuting counsel Greg Hoare told the court that in June McCracken had been caught stealing £45-worth of women's clothes from the Matalan store in Workington.

And a few days later he was caught with more than £100-worth of perfume and cosmetics after he was seen trying to remove security tags with a multitool in the Asda store in Aintree, Liverpool, he said.

In addition he had seemed to “turn up to do his community work (from the previous sentence) only when he felt like it,” Mr Hoare said.

Defending, his barrister said McCracken's “chaotic lifestyle caused by substance misuse” was to blame for his continued offending. He said that now he had given up drugs he could “understand the stupidity of his behaviour”.

Judge Paul Batty QC told McCracken – who had been in court 29 times before – that there was now no alternative to prison.

He said that in the past other sentences had been tried, but had met with “a singular lack of success”.

The judge re-sentenced McCracken for the pub burglary and gave him 12 months in prison.

He jailed him for two months for the Matalan theft, and six months for the one in the Liverpool Asda.

All the sentences will be served consecutively.

First published at 11:26, Friday, 10 August 2012
Published by http://www.newsandstar.co.uk