Stephen’s got more than 150 convictions to his name and most of them are for shoplifting – a crime, he claims, that’s always seemed victimless to him.

Our investigation found nearly 200 shoplifting offences were reported to Cumbria Constabulary in June – among more than 5,000 recorded in just five years.

Police say this kind of offending is far from victimless and has a negative impact on the local economy and communities.

Shoplifting’s a crime that’s a blight on businesses and one that leaves shops struggling and staff working in fear.

But for Barrow man Stephen, it’s an easy way of making money to maintain a drug habit that has ruled his life since he was barely out of primary school.

“It’s just so easy and shops don’t seem like victims to me”, he says, as he shares for the first time the story of how he turned from a troubled schoolboy into a prolific offender hooked on heroin by the age of 16.

“Shoplifting’s not as personal as some crimes,” he adds.

“I’ve used all sorts of methods over the years, from distracting shop staff while others go in to lining shopping bags with tin foil.”

He’s speaking from the clinic where he collects the results of mandatory drug tests – a licensing condition inherited from his last time in jail.

The results are positive, as they often are. Stephen’s trying to turn his back on the drugs that have left his life “in ruins” but he’s been housed with other users and that makes it hard to move on.

He first used drugs at 11 and was selling them by 14. He wasn’t even 16 when he was injected with heroin for the first time.

“I used to run away from home all the time, I’d rather sleep in a shed,” he says about those early days.

“I lived around a rough estate and got caught up in a lot of what was going on.

“My best mate’s parents were injecting heroin and we were around that all the time.”

The older lads on the estate became “a family” and he looked up to them, following in their footsteps even where they walked the darkest of paths.

“I just wanted to do what they were doing and it was always easy for kids like me to get drugs.

“It all stopped me going to school, ruined my life really.”

Committing crimes to afford an escalating habit “just seemed normal back then”.

“You wake up and you feel poorly so you need it not even to feel high, but to feel normal again.

“You’d get your first bag of heroin, then you could splash out on crack to bring you back down, but you’d need heroin again later to balance you back out,” he said.

“You can spend a couple of grand a day – I just watched one of my mates blow £22,000 and he got through that in a couple of weeks.”

Stephen’s not sure what could have been done to save him but he knows the key to saving others is early intervention.

“There’s not enough support out there for kids in trouble and I’d like to see people recognise the signs.

“I’d be a millionaire if I found the answers to this, but it’s probably about having a stable home and having the resources to move those kids away from the place they’ve ended up in.

“It’s about recognising when children are in that kind of situation and trying whatever you can to rescue them before it’s too late.”