A SERIAL offender with 178 previous convictions, who was due to be released from prison on Monday, has been jailed for a further eight months for assaulting prison officers, including spitting in their faces.
Christopher Henry Hall (48) was expected to be released next week after serving seven months of an 11-month sentence for grave and criminal assault. But the Magistrate’s Court heard that he had assaulted four different prison officers during his current spell in jail – spitting in their faces, making threats and shouting racial abuse.
Advocate Jordan Gollop, prosecuting, said the first incident took place on the morning of 12 May, when prisoners were having breakfast.
An argument broke out and a prison officer told the inmates involved to calm down, the court heard.
Advocate Gollop said: ‘Mr Hall became verbally abusive. He made threats to break his [the officer’s] jaw and called him “foreign scum”.’
Other prison officers were summoned to take Hall back to his cell. Advocate Gollop said: ‘He spat a number of times in an officer’s face and some of it entered his eye. He had to have tests to ensure he had not caught any illness.’
The tests proved clear. Then, on 29 June, Hall, who admitted all the offences, was in a meeting with three prison officers, the court was told.
‘He became abusive and aggressive and made a number of racial comments. He threatened to kill them,’ Advocate Gollop said.
When he was taken back to his cell he spat in the faces of each of them. Again they had to undergo medical tests, which proved clear.
Hall has 178 previous convictions for 354 offences.
Advocate Olaf Blakeley, defending, said of Hall: ‘He wants to apologise profusely. He finds it very difficult to control his temper.’
The lawyer added: ‘It wasn’t premeditated. It was just a reaction to what was for him a very difficult situation.
‘This is a man who is very sorry for his actions and wishes they hadn’t happened.’
Assistant Magistrate Peter Harris sentenced Hall two more months in jail for each of the four assaults, to run consecutively.
He said: ‘There are two Christopher Halls. You can be very respectful in court and very apologetic.
‘All that has happened just means longer in prison.’
