James Trott, 37, of Irenes Avenue in West Hull was told his criminal record was “appalling” with 149 convictions against him
James Trott was sentenced to three years and two months in prison on Wednesday(Image: Humberside Police)
A serial thief was jailed for three years and two months after stealing almost £2,500 of goods from Hull shops, with a judge describing him as a “professional shop lifter”. James Trott 37, of Irenes Avenue in West Hull, was slammed by a judge for his “appalling” criminal record after he stole power tools and other electrical items in a six-week stealing spree. Some of the offences occurred while he was on bail.
Trott pleaded guilty to eight counts of shop theft, nine counts of breaching a criminal behaviour order and one count of possession of crack cocaine at a previous hearing on July 27. He was sentenced at Hull Crown Court on Wednesday, where the court heard Trott repeatedly visited two stores, stealing power tools, headphones and other electrical items. In total, he pinched items worth £2,485 from B&Q on Stoneferry Road in Hull, and B&M at the North Point Shopping Centre. The biggest haul he got away with was on July 21 when he stole £647 worth of household goods from B&Q.
Recorder Gordon Stables said: “He is a professional shop lifter and it’s going to keep going. Nothing is going to stop it.” The court heard how Trott has 149 offences recorded against him, 89 of which are for theft. In September 2024, he was handed a five-year criminal behaviour order following a series of shop theft offences. Recorder Stables said the current nine breaches show “a wholesale disregard for that court order which was specifically designed to prevent this type of offending”.
Mitigating, Hannah Turner said it is “a tale as old as time as to how he finds himself in this position” and her client admits he is “getting too old” for this way of life. She told the court how, when Trott was last released from prison, he was offered housing by the probation service in the Orchard Park area of Hull but soon became homeless due to having “unsavourable acquaintances” in the area and returned to using drugs.
“He was shoplifting to fund his habit, to eat and to essentially get by,” she said, adding he has been a drug user for “eight to ten years”. “He is 37 and is simply getting too old for this revolving door of custody that he finds himself in with these sentences being imposed becoming longer and longer due to repeat offending,” she said.
Recorder Stables said: “These were not offences committed in a single day in a moment of foolishness or desperation. The goods stolen were not food to live on, or clothing to wear, but items that could be sold on to generate cash for you. Retailers are entitled to conduct their business free of systematic theft. The public also bears the cost of your thefts when persistent shoplifting causes losses and they have to absorb them through increased prices. The law has to protect businesses and the public.”
Handing Trott a jail sentence of three years and two months, he said “the courts have warned you, they have fined you, they have supervised you, they have suspended sentences over your head, they have sent you to prison time and again, yet you return to the same course of conduct.”
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