Mansfield burglar’s stark choice: ‘Turn your life around or die in a ditch with a needle in your arm’

Dean Graves, now aged 52, of no fixed address, appeared at Nottingham Crown Court on Tuesday after pleading guilty to burglary and theft charges.

He stole a £2,000 electric bike the owner left locked outside a medical centre in Wood Street, Mansfield, on April 28, Philip Plant, prosecuting, said.

Graves also stole a pencil case and a notebook after smashing the window of a parked car on Wallis Road, at 4.45am on May 22.

He was captured on CCTV jumping over a garden fence and breaking into a shed in Woodland Drive, Mansfield.

He then broke into the Bryson Bell opticians on Westgate by smashing through a glass door panel and stole £6,000 of sunglasses, on June 3.

"The choice now is a stark one," Judge Michael Auty told him. "I could simply send you to prison for the full 18 months immediately. But there would come a time in the near future when you would be released."

He said Graves would have no drug rehabilitation or assistance from the probation service.

"There would be nothing for you at all, " he said. "You have had a lifetime of abusing drugs. There will be people reading reports of this case who will say this is your choice.

"But that would overlook your background.”

The judge said no one could read a report of Graves' very difficult upbringing and come away "without some sympathy."

Graves received 18 months, suspended for two years, with 12 months of drug rehabilitation, including close monitoring by the probation service and frequent reviews.

He must also carry out 20 rehabilitation days and the 26-session building choices programme, which will help him find secure and permanent accommodation.

“I can’t spell it out to you anymore,” Judge Auty told him. “To anyone reading a report of this case and thinks it is a soft sentence: it isn't.

"It would be much easier to send you to prison and you would be out in a few months and back to where you started.”