PEOPLE in York are safer now a prolific burglar and lifelong criminal has been jailed, police have said.

Michael Andrew Hester, 40, of York, was sentenced to four years after he was caught at York train station with stolen property from a burglary in Scarborough.

Hester is well-known to police in the city, having 145 previous convictions, including many for burglary, and has already served four and a half years in prison for carrying out 32 night-time house raids in York.

Det Chief Insp Steve Smith said: “It’s a great result. Hester is a lifelong criminal.

“That sentence will afford some degree of protection to homeowners in York, particularly around Acomb.

“If he is inside, he cannot burgle.”

Hester, who is of no fixed address, but has lived in Fossway, off Huntington Road, and Arran Place, Heworth, in the past, pleaded guilty to a night-time burglary in Scarborough and handling a stolen dictaphone.

Police stopped him at the station on his return to his home city, York Crown Court was told.

The last time he appeared before York Crown Court for burglary, the judge gave him an 876-day sentence, or just under three years.

His barrister, Taryn Turner, asked for him to receive a similar sentence for the Scarborough raid, which she described as an opportunistic burglary. She claimed the trip by Hester and his partner to Scarborough had not been to commit crimes.

“I have to stand back and consider what your response was to such leniency in the past,” said the Recorder of York, Judge Stephen Ashurst. “I am afraid it is to carry out serious offences.”

Michael Bosomworth, prosecuting, said the occupant of a Scarborough house had been unaware that she had been burgled while she slept on the night of July 7 and 8 until police rang her a couple of days later to say they had her mobile phone.

Hester had entered her house, probably through an unlocked door as she could not remember locking it before going to bed.

He stole cash from a box as well as the phone.

He also had a stolen dictaphone with its charger with him when police searched him at York Railway Station on July 11.

Mrs Turner said Hester had been leading a chaotic life since he had become homeless and had returned to his old habits of taking drugs and burglary.

The court was told Hester’s first conviction was in 1986.