A haul of Cadbury's Heroes and washing powder leads to a 20 week prison sentence for persistent offender

Ashley Terence Neville Moore appeared at Leeds Magistrates Court on Friday via a video link charged with five thefts from the Co-op at Ash Grove in South Elmsall in a shop-lifting spree which started three days after he had been given a community order for a previous offence and while he was supposed to be subject to a curfew.

The court heard that on August 25, Moore aged 32, stole £68 worth of washing powder. On September 1 he stole £20 worth of meat and twice the following day returned and stole tins of Cadbury's Heroes to the value of £50. The day after that Moore was back and stole £34 worth of meat.

In total, £172 worth of items were taken from the store but were never found.

Moore took them, say the Crown Prosecution Service, to fund his drug habit having being dependent on drugs, such as heroin, for the last 12 years.

Anjum Nazir, mitigating, said Moore, who is of no fixed abode, had been staying with a friend who lived near the Co-op and that he stole the items because he was desperate for drugs and suffering withdrawal symptoms.

He said: "He accepts his record does not do him any favours. These took place over a relatively short period of time at the same location. They were not the most sophisticated, it is a case where he walked in to the store, selected the items, concealed them and left the store.

"There is no suggestion he threatened or confronted any members of staff or used weapons to commit any of these offences."

Moore was sentenced to four weeks in prison for each of the theft charges which will run alongside each other, 12 weeks for breaching one of the community orders he was on at the time that the offences took place and four weeks for breaching the second order.

Chair of the bench, Ruth Hartley said: "They were so serious that only a custodial sentence can be possible. There has been wilful and persistent failures to comply with community orders