The stupidest criminal of the year has - unsurprisingly - been caught

Now, crime is, officially, a bad thing isn’t it? And criminals are bad aren’t they - unless they’re sorry and promise not to do it again and/or they had a lot of mitigating circumstances. After all, is stealing food when you’re hungry that bad a thing? Look we haven’t got time to get into the morals of all of this but one thing we can definitely agree on is that this man, this criminal, the one you’re about to read about, is an absolute idiot criminal who is almost comically bad at his ‘job’.

The CrimeLine Complete Twitter account has highlighted the case of Stuart Campbell, a 42-year-old ‘professional’ burglar (we’ll use that term loosely), who pleaded guilty at Portsmouth Crown Court to five burglaries in Waterlooville.

He committed these burglaries ‘hours after having a GPS tracker fitted to his leg following his release from prison’ - he had been inside since being convicted in 2014 for three offences of burglary, for which he was imprisoned for six years. 

James Kellam, Crown Advocate for the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) Wessex said:

“The night after the tracker was fitted, Mr Campbell committed five burglaries in a residential area of Waterlooville. Stealing mainly contents of handbags, keys, credit cards and cash. He then got rid of the tracker by cutting it off.

“When analysing the data from the tracker the Integrated Offender Management Unit was able to trace Campbell’s movement before he discarded the device. The data placed him at the scene of each and every burglary with which he was charged.

“Faced with the compelling evidence provided to us by Hampshire Police, he was left with no choice but to plead guilty.”

Just let that sink in. 

1. He committed five burglaries, whilst wearing a GPS tracker.

2. Even better, Campbell had voluntarily agreed to have it fitted to his leg, following his release from HMP Winchester.

3. And, in case you missed it, he cut it off after committing the burglaries.

Incredible. Absolutely incredible.

He was, inevitably, sentenced to eight years in prison, after asking for a further 12 burglaries to be taken into consideration - as explained by The Secret Barrister, this might have been his one smart move:

Following the sentence, James Kellam, Crown Advocate for the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) Wessex said: “Stuart Campbell is a prolific burglar with an appalling criminal history, having been before the courts 31 times for a total of 179 offences between 1987 and 2014.”

“This case, which we believe is the first in which data from a GPS tracker has been used to secure a conviction, demonstrates how advancing technologies help us build stronger cases to put before the court.”

Bill Ellson speaks for us all:

(Image: 20th Century Fox Film Corp)