Mansfield burglar shattered family’s dream of starting a new life

Jonathon White was identified by his fingerprints after clipping a garage lock, smashing a window and stealing more than £4,500 of items from the flat on Outram Street, around September 16, last year.

Prosecutor Stuart Pattinson said White was arrested after he was thrown out of a Mansfield pub on December 2.

"The burglary has shattered our dreams," he read from the victims’ statement. "We are devastated. Our three children are scared and anxious to stay in the house."

Nottingham Crown Court heard that 39-year-old White was on bail at the time for burgling a Subway sandwich bar.

And he failed to attend court on the same day as the Sutton break-in.

He has 74 previous convictions, including five for burglary. In 2016 he was jailed for 45 months for a break-in which netted him just £12.

Gareth Gimson, mitigating, said: “He deserves custody but could this be the dawning of something new in Jonathan White?”

He said White was living with an ex-prison officer who set up a halfway house and has the prospect of a job. He is now clean of drugs after taking heroin since he was 15.

“For the first time he seems to have seen the light,” he said. Could your Honour find any way to step back and do something with this man, who, after many years, seems to have reached a threshold?”

White, of Raylawn Street, Mansfield, pleaded guilty to burglary, after receiving a community order with a drug rehabilitation requirement for the Subway burglary, on October 19, last year.

On Thursday, Judge Stuart Rafferty QC said the magistrates who gave White a chance didn’t know “on that very day you committed a serious burglary”.

“You knew all the time that you committed that awful burglary,” he told him. “You absolutely devastated their home. You have been committing burglaries for all your adult life.

“It’s always been within your competence to change – you just haven't had the strength of character.”

Acknowledging the credit for White’s plea, the judge kept the sentence to “an absolute minimum” of two years and five months.

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