AN 18-YEAR-OLD man who committed a series of drug and public-order offences has been jailed for seven months for breaching his community service order twice.
Assistant Magistrate Sarah Fitz told the man that the court had no other options left but to send him to jail.
The JEP is choosing not to name the man as he was under 18 at the time of his original sentencing by the Youth Court.
Legal adviser Samantha Nixon, prosecuting, said he had initially been sentenced to 180 hours of community service and was put on probation for 12 months following a series of crimes.
The teenager broke into a bar and stole bottles of spirits. He also stole from a supermarket, was found in possession of cannabis with intent to supply it, became abusive and disruptive in a row outside a house, obstructed a police officer who had searched him for drugs and was found with ecstasy, herbal cannabis and cannabis resin. He had admitted the offences.
On 13 June, he was found to have been in breach of his community service order. But the court heard that since then he had breached it again, on 2 July.
He had been warned by a manager that he was not making reasonable effort and became ‘argumentative and verbally abusive,’ the legal adviser said.
Advocate Allana Binnie, defending, said that the man complied very well with the probation-order element of the sentence, but admitted: ‘The community service set-up is just not working.’
Of the breach on 2 July, she said: ‘He was doing the work a bit slowly. Other people were doing it more quickly but he thought they were not taking so much care over it. He genuinely thought he was doing it to a good standard.’
The man also addressed the court himself, saying: ‘I just want to sort everything out and have a normal life again. I regret everything I’ve done.’
Assistant Magistrate Sarah Fitz said she was left with no alternative but to send him to prison.
She said he had been given a second chance after first breaching the community service order, and told him: ‘The court very much hoped that we wouldn’t be seeing you another time. But you find yourself here again.
‘Having given you so many chances we reluctantly accept that we have no other options left.’
She added that she was reducing the potential jail sentence by taking into account the 50 hours of community service he had completed.
