A THIEF who has become institutionalised after clocking up 12 burglary convictions carried out two more break-ins because he wanted to go back inside.
And Chris Hook, whose first run-in with the law had been when he was just 12, got his wish when a judge at Warwick Crown Court jailed him for three years and nine months.
The 43 year-old of Humber Road, Coventry, pleaded guilty to burglaries at a house in Newton near Rugby and at an address in Bedfordshire a week later.
Prosecutor Tim Sapwell said that on June 1 the owner of a detached house in Newton, returned home at shortly before 4pm to find he had been burgled.
Some 40 items of jewellery – which had belonged to his wife’s mother – and cash had been taken.
Other items had been laid out ready to take, but it is thought Kook had been disturbed by the return of the owner’s daughter.
A week later Hook travelled to Bedford, where he carried out another break-in and stole property worth £1,500.
He was arrested after DNA was found at both properties linking him to the burglaries.
Mr Sapwell added Hook had 34 convictions for 159 offences, including a robbery for which he was jailed for eight years in 1998.
Amy Jackson, defending, said: “He appreciates his record is appalling, and he is realistic about the position he’s in. He has had run-ins with the law since he was 12 years of age.
“He has now dealt with some of his demons, but some of them remain. Following his long sentence at the end of the 1990s it took him 11 years to deal with them.
“But the position he now finds himself in is, he says to me, that he has become institutionalised. He can’t cope on the outside.
“He committed these offences, knowing he had left blood at the scene, because he wanted to go back to prison.
“But he now realises he can’t keep going to prison, and he can’t keep doing this to people.”
Jailing Hook, Judge Andrew Lockhart QC told him: “You don’t need me to tell you the upset offences such as you have committed cause, because you have been doing it for many years.
“No doubt you have seen many times judges like me saying this, and you pay no attention.”
