Prolific thief banned from Mansfield Woodhouse supermarket

John Readman, aged 40, returned time and again to the same shop in Mansfield Woodhouse to steal beer, whisky, vodka and even champagne.

After a spate of offences in July 2023 he was arrested, charged and remanded into custody before being handed a suspended prison sentence.

However, he was then caught stealing again from the same place – most recently on Thursday, August 31.

Appearing at Nottingham Magistrates’ Court on Wednesday, September 6, he was jailed for 12 weeks.

Readman, of no fixed address, was also made the subject of a Criminal Behaviour Order.

The order, granted by the court after an application by the Mansfield Priority Crime Team, prohibits him from entering the Morrisons store in Mansfield Woodhouse and the attached petrol station.

Any breach of that order could result in his immediate return to jail.

The Priority Crime Team, based at Mansfield Police Station, has been set up to tackle the small number of organised gangs and prolific individual offenders who are responsible for a disproportionate amount of shop thefts.

Nottinghamshire Police said its most common theft offence is shoplifting – which it is actively working to tackle in Mansfield.

In Mansfield last year – 2022 – police investigated about 70 theft-from-the-person offences, compared with about 1,300 shoplifting offences.

Inspector Kylie Davies, district commander for Mansfield, said: “Shop theft is a serious crime that can have a significant impact on shop workers and local businesses.

“It is also an offence perpetrated by a relatively small number of highly motivated offenders.

“Some are stealing on a daily basis to fund addictions, whilst others are members of gangs who travel all over the region to target the same kind of businesses over and over again.

“We are already working hard to stop this kind of offending in Mansfield and have recently developed a local programme to identify and monitor the most prominent local offenders.

“Several of them are already subject to similarly restrictive Criminal Behaviour Orders and we expect to secure more of these in the weeks and months ahead.”