Prolific Stockton offender jailed for trying to burgle home days after courts gave him another chance

A prolific criminal has finally been jailed after he squandered a last chance given to him by the courts.

Craig Edward Wood, 35, returned to his life of crime days after pleading to a Teesside judge: “I just don’t want to waste my life anymore.”

The persistent offender’s luck ran out as was locked up for two years and three months at Teesside Crown Court this week.

Earlier this year Judge John Walford gave him a stern grilling - then a suspended prison sentence - for his 94th crime.

The judge asked him: “You’ve never done an honest day’s work in your life, have you?”

“No,” replied Wood from the dock.

The judge went on: “You’ve never worked and you’ve harmed an awful lot of people, for no better reason than the fact that you’ve chosen to take drugs.

“Now you’re saying, ‘I’m going to change.’ How can I believe that?

“How can I be reassured on behalf of the public that what you’re saying is genuine, and not just an attempt to slide out of a prison sentence and drift back into the feckless life you were leading before?”

Wood answered: “I do know what you’re saying, your Honour. I assure you it’s not going to happen.

“I just wish I’d come to my senses years ago. I’m just wasting my life.”

He’d been caught with loot hours after a burglary at a Stockton flat, not long out of a three-year jail term.

He vehemently denied the burglary and avoided a potential minimum three-year jail term.

Prosecutors accepted his plea to handling stolen goods despite - said Judge Walford - “overwhelming” evidence linking him to the burglary.

Wood was a drug user since he was 14 and offended to fund his addiction, with burglaries and robberies on his record since he was 15.

Defence lawyer Peter Wishlade told the judge: “It’s never too late to give him an opportunity.”

Judge Walford agreed, passing a one-year prison sentence suspended for two years with supervision, drug rehabilitation and 100 hours’ unpaid work.

He told Wood on February 27: “I hope this is a turning point for you.”

Just 13 days later, Wood committed his latest crime.

Wood, of Varo Terrace, Stockton, admitted attempting to burgle a home on Wembley Way, Stockton on March 12.

This week Judge Howard Crowson jailed him for 15 months for the new offence plus 12 months from a breached suspended sentence.