A crack cocaine addict who burgled a house while on early release from prison has been jailed for three years.

Luke Paterson had been out for just two months after being sentenced as a ‘three strike’ burglar when he broke into the house.

And branding the 21-year-old ‘a persistent burglar’, a judge said if he didn’t jail him the victims ‘would feel abandoned by the courts’.

Andy Pritchard, prosecuting, told Swindon crown court the couple, who live at the house on Common Platt, Purton, had gone to work on the morning of Wednesday, February 17.

The wife had left last at 8.30am and returned for lunch at 1pm to find the house had been broken into through an expensive set of bespoke rear doors.

She realised an attempt had been made to force the front door and when that failed the shed had been broken into and tools taken and used to jemmy open the back.

Once inside, the house had been searched and a PlayStation console worth about £250 along with about £400 in cash and some cigarettes were taken.

Mr Pritchard said police found a fingerprint belonging to Paterson left on a sweet tin which had been used to store the cash.

Paterson, of Brunswick House, Corporation Street, pleaded guilty to one count of burglary.

The court heard he had a string of previous convictions for burglary starting from when he was a teenager.

Andrew Hobson, defending, said his client had been released from custody in December after being jailed for breaking into houses.

He said he received a 29 month term as a three strike burglar and had been released early when he committed the break in.

Mr Hobson said the earlier offences had been committed when he was in the grip of a crack cocaine addiction which he got off while in prison.

But after he was released he said he fell back into the habit and broke into the house, about 10 minutes’ from his mum’s home, to try and get money to buy drugs.

He urged the court to take the unusual step of allowing his client to go on a drugs rehabilitation programme.

Mr Hobson said he could live with a relative away from Swindon so he would not be tempted back into his old ways by people who knew about his drug taking past.

“I very depressingly fear that if the court is minded to send this man to custody for a long period that we may in the future be here again,” he said.

Jailing him, Recorder David Lane QC said: “You have had chance after chance after chance to reform but you simply don’t. You show no respect for other people’s property or homes.

“If I were to accede to your counsel’s request I am sure that lady and her husband would feel abandoned by the courts and the burglar had got away with it.”