A serial York criminal is making sure police know exactly where he is every minute of every day, York magistrates heard.

Andrew Horsman, 40, has been breaking the law for decades. He has served many prison sentences and has more than 110 previous convictions, 62 of them for theft and similar offences.

He is so prolific, that when he was released from prison in 2021, North Yorkshire Police put out a warning about him to the general public.

Now, York Magistrates' Court heard he is voluntarily wearing an electronic tag that continually records his location and tells police exactly where he is at any time in a bid to stop his crimes.

Horsman, of no fixed address, was before the court for cocaine driving and theft of DVDs worth together £140.93 from HMV in Coney Street on Christmas Eve. He pleaded guilty to both offences.

He was fined £40, ordered to pay a £16 statutory surcharge and £85 prosecution costs and banned from driving for 17 months.

He is also on a community order imposed by Hull and Holderness magistrates in October with 80 hours of unpaid work after he admitted fraud and burglary committed in Pocklington on August 9.

Since he was stopped in Tadcaster Road, York, on August 12, he has served a prison sentence for burglary and other offences.

“He is determined not to go back to that, he is determined not to reoffend,” said his solicitor Kevin Blount.

“Since Christmas he has been working with the police, wearing voluntarily a GPS tag. Police then know where he is 24/7.”

Horsman has so long a list of criminal convictions for going into changing rooms and stealing people’s wallets that when such a crime is committed, the first person the local police suspect is Andrew Horsman, said Mr Blount.

Now they can check where he was at the relevant time and see if it was him or not.

Marya Yasin, prosecuting, said police stopped Horsman in Tadcaster Road for not having a driving licence. He failed a roadside drugs test and a blood sample later revealed he had taken cocaine. He also had methadone in his body.

On Christmas Eve, a store employee caught him taking DVDs from the shelves at HMV in Coney Street, putting them in his pocket and walking out without paying for them.

Mr Blount said Horsman was sentenced for driving without insurance and driving without a licence in connection with the Tadcaster Road incident when he was jailed last year.  He suggested that the magistrates who dealt with him then would not have increased the sentence had they been sentencing him as well for the drug driving.

At the end of last year, Horsman had started taking drugs again and on Christmas Eve, Horsman had been desperate to find Christmas presents for his friends, so he had stolen the DVDs.

The community order imposed in October was for offences that he had committed before he was sent to jail, said Mr Blount.