A PROLIFIC burglar has been jailed for more than six years for carrying out 22 raids within weeks of being freed from prison.

Drug addict Darren Robinson was told by a judge he would have been locked up for even longer had he not helped police clear up a series of break-ins in which £36,600 of property was stolen.

Robinson, 24, initially admitted seven burglaries in east Cleveland and North Yorkshire but yesterday asked for a further 15 to be taken into consideration.

Judge Anthony Briggs, who jailed Robinson for a total of six years and four months, said: "But for your co-operation, your sentence would have been longer.

"That, together with an indication that you may be about to mend your ways, allows me to keep your sentence lower than it would otherwise be."

Teesside Crown Court heard how Robinson, of Fonteyne Court, Hemlington, Middlesbrough, had been released from a four-and-a-half year prison sentence for burglary on October 22, last year.

The first break-in he carried out during his latest two-month campaign was on November 25 and the last was on January 28 this year.

Jo Kidd, prosecuting, told the court that Robinson was arrested on January 7 after a raid on a house in Castleton, in the Cleveland Hills, while the householders were in bed.

He was given bail but recalled to prison at the end of the month for breaching the conditions of his release on licence when he was linked to the other six burglaries by muddy footprints left at the scenes in Guisborough, Great Ayton, Stokesley and Great Broughton.

Last month, he told police he had committed a string of other break-ins and was driven around the Guisborough, Yearby and New Marske areas to show officers the 15 houses.

Robinson's barrister Mike Bosomworth described Robinson as "thoroughly institutionalised" and revealed the longest period of liberty he had enjoyed in the last eight years was six months.

"It does appear, rather late in the day, but he is still a relatively young man, that he is beginning to appreciate where this spiral of offending is leading," he said.

"On this occasion he has put himself forward to make efforts to get drug-free inside."