A SERIAL shoplifter was jailed yesterday after all other sentencing options had been exhausted.

Barbara Cheryl Taylor, 28, admitted stealing children's clothes when she appeared before Darlington magistrates.

The clothes, from the town centre's British Homes Stores shop, were worth £149.

Bill Brabban, prosecuting, said Taylor had an appalling record of offences, mainly shoplifting.

He said Taylor, of Geneva Road, Darlington, was caught by a plain clothes police officer.

Stephen Andrews, mitigating, said: "If you look at her record, you can glean from it that many years have been blighted by heroin abuse.

"There have been other times when she was involved with other illegal substances." He said Taylor is now drug-free.

The court also heard she had been given several punishment orders in the past following previous offending.

Magistrates' chairman Glynn Wales said: "The message that comes across this morning is how many people you have let down."

Magistrates invoked a previous suspended sentence of 16 weeks and also gave her a consecutive eight-week prison sentence.

Mr Wales added: "Everything else has been tried and failed."