A notorious burglar dubbed 'Pocket Money Boy' because he was paid a weekly allowance by police to stop him stealing has been jailed - after admitting his 102nd offence.

Casey Bowen became infamous in the mid-1990s after it emerged his parents were being paid by the probation service.

The £60 cash was for his mum and dad to buy him items he was regularly stealing such as trainers and computer games.

But Bowen, 39, has now been caged for four years and 10 months for raiding a home in Swindon, Wilts., in July - another offence on a record spanning TWO DECADES.

A court heard that he ransacked the property, throwing clothes across the floor and making off with cash and thousands of pounds worth of jewellery.

He also admitted hiding a mobile phone up his backside in an attempt to smuggle the device into HMP Bullington, in Oxfordshire, on a separate charge.

Sentencing, Judge Ian Lawrie QC told Bowen he had been given a golden opportunity to get his life back on track - but he had been back committing burglaries just months after he was released from prison.

“He is not pulling the wool over my eyes anymore,” Judge Lawrie said.

Bowen, of no fixed address, pleaded guilty to burglary when he appeared before Swindon Crown Court in early August.

But the case was sent to Gloucester Crown Court as the vast bulk of Bowen’s crimes have been committed in that county.

The court in Swindon heard that Bowen had been promised help with his attention deficit hyperactivity disorder following his last conviction for burglary in 2018.

Given a three-year sentence for that offence, Bowen was released from prison in April without support or medication.

After falling out with associates in Cheltenham, he fled to Swindon where he had been put under pressure by others to offend.

Sentencing Bowen last summer for a series of burglaries across Gloucestershire, Judge Lawrie described the thief as a deeply flawed and troubled individual.

Told by Bowen’s brief that prison did not work, Judge Lawrie responded: "It gives everyone respite from his antics."

Bowen was given the nickname 'Pocket Money Boy' by the tabloids in the mid-1990s when it was revealed his family was being paid £60 a week in a last ditch bid to stop him from committing crime.

After a string of offences and escapes from children’s homes, social services paid his family the pocket money to buy items like computer games and trainers that he had been stealing.