A YOUTH banned from wearing a hoodie and barred from entering car parks in a part of the region was yesterday jailed for eight months.

Magistrate Oliver Johnson told Christopher James Wood he was a menace to society and he hoped prison would teach him a "salutary lesson".

Wood was banned from wearing baseball caps, woollen hats and hooded tops under the terms of an anti-social behaviour order (Asbo), last September. He was also barred from entering car parks on Teesside.

But Teesside magistrates heard yesterday that within days of his release from Stockton's Holme House Prison, where he had been sent following an earlier breach of the order, he was spotted in the car park at Harper's Garden Centre, at Norton, near Stockton, and was wearing a baseball cap.

Eleven days later, Wood was seen in the Bath Lane East car park, in Stockton, where he physically brushed shoulders with a car park attendant who had had previous dealings with him, Samantha Morhan-Baylis, prosecuting, told the court.

Dennis Chisman, for Wood, appealed to magistrates, saying: "I would ask you to keep a sense of proportion about the sentencing. The circumstance of his committing offences is being where he should not have been. It is not a case in respect of this sentence where he went into a car park to break into cars. The offences simply amount to being there."

Mr Johnson said Wood, formerly of Pentland Avenue, Billingham, Teesside, was a persistent offender who repeatedly breached his Asbo, and custody was the only possible sentence.

"This behaviour society will not accept. It is intolerable and we will not allow it to continue."

Wood appeared before magistrates for sentencing for breaching the Asbo order when he was spotted at the garden centre. He had pleaded not guilty at an earlier hearing, but was found guilty.

He also appeared for a breach of the order in relation to being seen in the Bath Lane East car park and pleaded guilty to that.

Sending him to prison, Mr Johnson said: "We hope this will be a salutary lesson. Your attitude is quite appalling."

Mr Johnson ordered that two offences, an alleged theft from a motor vehicle and an alleged breach of the Asbo, both of which Wood denies, be allowed to lie on file.