A SERIAL offender who has previously been deemed a lost cause by the probation service is back behind bars.

Adam Lees is known to staff in both the courts and prisons having appeared there on a number of occasions over recent years.

The 35-year-old was locked up last month got shoplifting and assault, only to reoffend this month on the same day as he was released from jail.

He was charged with theft from a shop and refusing to provide a sample for class A drug test, and he appeared before Chester Magistrates’ Court on Thursday, May 25

Alan Currums, prosecuting the case, explained how Lees was incarcerated on April 24 after stealing a quantity of washing products of a value unknown from Tesco in Warrington on March 19.

He did the same on April 16 and then assaulted a male police officer five days later and was subsequently jailed for eight weeks.

He was released on May 19, and on that same day he frequented the Co-op store on Knutsford Road in Latchford, where he stole groceries and a shopping basket worth £168.20.

Being a person in police detention at Runcorn Custody Suite following his arrest, he failed without good cause to provide a sample to ascertain whether he had a class A drug in his body.

Lees has built up an appalling criminal record over the years, committing more than 90 offences, and during his last court appearance, the probation service said that it was unable to offer him anything more in terms of rehabilitation than it did previously.

The defendant was previously jailed last summer for stealing bottles of booze, as well as in January 2021 for attacking a vulnerable man in sheltered accommodation to rob a £10 note.

For these latest offences, magistrates said that custody was inevitable because the defendant has a ‘flagrant disregard for people and their property’.

Taking his guilty pleas into account, they sentenced Lees, now of Westminster Street in Crewe, to four weeks in prison.