A TEENAGER who was already York’s most arrested person when he was 15 has been jailed three years later, after a judge condemned his “shocking” and “inexcusable” record.

Anthony Kerrigan has been getting into trouble with the police since he was 12 years old and has been in court on 42 occasions for 92 offences.

Half were for breaching court orders including his ASBO (Antisocial Behaviour Order).

When he got the ASBO in 2007, aged 15, his case was covered in The Press and concerns raised with authorities.

But the 18-year-old of Lowther Street, in The Groves, has now been jailed for six months after again breaching his ASBO, fighting in the street, possessing the class B drug mephedrone and failing to answer to bail.

Kevin Curran, the director of York organisation Inspired Youth, declined to comment on individual cases, but said many young people were “stuck in a revolving door”.

“It’s a real shame when young people's lives go wrong and go off the rails and when they haven't got strong foundations to aspire to more positive things," he said.

David Garnett, prosecuting, told York Crown Court Kerrigan pleaded guilty to the offences in the magistrates’ court but the case was sent to the crown court for sentencing.

He said Kerrigan had been arrested after being seen to join in a fight in the early hours of June 24 outside McDonalds in Blake Street. Kerrigan was with an older man and a woman.

The man was fighting with another individual and Kerrigan was seen to run in on several occasions and punch his victim, sometimes from behind.

Mr Garnett said Kerrigan’s previous crimes included shoplifting and being drunk and disorderly.

The terms of his ASBO, which was made in March 2007 and runs for four years, ban him from swearing and being aggressive towards members of the public.

He is also banned from getting in any motor vehicle without the permission of the owner and from seeing various named individuals, including the older man and woman he was with during the street fight.

Glenn Parsons, mitigating, conceded his client had a “poor record”, but said most of the ASBO breaches were due to his client meeting up with the friends he is banned from seeing.

He said Kerrigan looked up to those older friends. He said Kerrigan had been on remand for the past month in Hull Prison, where he was put on the vulnerable prisoners’ wing, and said the spell in the adult jail had been an eye-opener for his client, after the young offenders’ institute at Wetherby.

Judge Stephen Ashurst sentenced Kerrigan to six months’ detention for breaching his ASBO, three months concurrent for the street fight and one month each for possessing mephedrone and failing to answer bail.

He said: “You have, I’m afraid, a shocking record for breaching court orders. It is unusual for someone as young as you to breach an antisocial behaviour order so many times –21 times is utterly inexcusable. If courts don’t act on breaches of ASBOs such orders become meaningless.”

He added that if he carried on breaching the ASBO once he was released he could look forward to ever longer sentences.

Mr Curran, whose organisation seeks to empower young people through the use of media, said many young people faced difficult circumstances.

He stressed he did not condone any offences and said it was important to work with young people to try to prevent them turning to crime.

York Central MP Hugh Bayley said it was important to maintain funding for programmes that gave children from bad homes a chance, but said: “If teenagers or adults offend they must be punished or else the offending will get worse.”

Angela Crossland, of City of York Council’s Youth Offending Team, said young people were assessed for risk of further offending, harm to others and their own safe guarding and individual plans were developed.