A JUDGE has urged a burglar to think of his mother and not waste his life in crime and ever longer prison sentences.

David Nicholson, 19, was being sentenced at York Crown Court for three burglaries and other offences committed to fund the drug habits of himself and his girlfriend.

The court heard he had already served two jail terms, and defence barrister Glenn Parsons said Nicholson's father spent most of his life behind bars before killing himself.

Judge Michael Mettyear said he had read a touching letter from Nicholson's mother, who obviously still cared a lot for him.

"If you continue to behave in the way you have been behaving, you will get longer and longer terms of imprisonment. Not only are you wasting your own life, but you are causing her hurt," he told Nicholson.

"In the end it is up to you. You have got to sort your own life out."

Jailing Nicholson for two years, he said: "Bear in mind my warning. If you continue to behave like this you will get very long sentences."

Nicholson, of Drake House, Woolnough Avenue, Tang Hall, York, pleaded guilty to two house burglaries, four thefts and one failure to attend court.

He denied a £3,179 burglary at an Elvington garden centre, but magistrates convicted him after a trial and sent him to the crown court for sentence.

Prosecuting, Geraldine Kelly said Nicholson and another man were raiding a York house on May 8 when the occupier returned from work and scared them off.

On March 28, he was acting as a look-out for an accomplice during another house burglary when the occupier spotted the raiders. They fled, but their woman victim alerted neighbours and Nicholson was caught nearby.

Updated: 10:44 Saturday, July 27, 2002