A heroin addict was jailed as she exhausted the patience of Teesside’s most senior judge.
Donna Louise Carter was told today: “You give no thought to your future. You give no thought to the consequences of your actions.
“The time has now come when you are to serve a custodial sentence,” said Judge Simon Bourne-Arton QC.
Teesside Crown Court heard how the 32-year-old squandered two chances given to her by the judge.
She was heavily pregnant when she was given a 15-month prison sentence suspended for two years in October 2013.
She had admitted supplying a £10 heroin wrap.
Two months later police searched her Thornaby home on February 28 this year.
When her boyfriend was caught with four wraps of heroin, he said: “They’re my girlfriend’s.
“I’m looking after them for her because she got taxed the other night. I don’t even take drugs.”
She admitted possession of the Class A drugs, saying she bought them and gave them to her partner to ensure she didn’t take them all at once.
Judge Bourne-Arton, the Recorder of Middlesbrough, postponed her sentence in June in the hope she would work with the Probation Service and undergo drug rehabilitation.
He warned her: “I have two years in mind. It’s up to you if you wish to serve it.”
Today Nigel Soppitt, for probation, told of her response to the order: “Virtually not at all.
“It’s wholly unsatisfactory. The order is wholly unworkable, despite their best efforts.”
Carter had 26 previous offences with a “long history of dishonesty and prostitution” but was out of trouble for six years between 2006 and 2012.
Andrew Turton, defending, said Carter thought she had complied well with orders.
He said: “Unfortunately this lady is lost at the moment.
“The drugs continue to have a hold on her. She still has a chaotic lifestyle.”
He said events overtook her and she was haunted by personal, emotional and health problems including her mother’s dementia.
She was “overwhelmed by the enormity of her position” and couldn’t grasp the lifeline offered to her by the court, added Mr Turton.
He suggested she might need a “short sharp shock” to give her a “fresh start or kick-start”.
The judge said he’d given Carter a chance after hearing of her desperate circumstances, but she ducked out of her obligations to the Probation Service.
He told her: “You may not look 32. You may look considerably older than your age but that’s no doubt due to the lifestyle you’ve had.
“You come back now using those problems yet again as an excuse.
“Probation and this court have done their best to try and help you, but you’ve made a lifestyle choice, essentially carrying on with drug use.
“You are immersed in the drug cycle.”
He jailed her for 18 months.
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