Homeless alcoholic jailed for a year

Neville Dickinson only ever stayed out of prison for two or three days, and sometimes only hours, because drinking was “like breathing” to him.

Recorder David Holborn said he felt helpless and jailed the 57-year-old for a year yesterday, at Chelmsford Crown Court.

Dickinson, formerly of Mersea Road, Colchester, was given the antisocial behaviour order in August 2004, banning him from drinking in public, using abusive, aggressive or loud language in public, and begging.

The court heard Dickinson, who sleeps rough in Colchester, has 132 convictions for 280 separate offences dating back to 1964.

Andrew Jackson, prosecuting, said he had not long been released from a two-year sentence imposed on August 18 last year for two breaches, when police saw him drinking lager and he became abusive.

Dickinson, of no fixed address, admitted breaching his Asbo on August 1 and August 7, in Colchester town centre.

Lucy Osborn, defending, said: “It’s a perpetual cycle and all avenues to break the cycle have been tried.

“He’s a chronic alcoholic and homeless.

“If you impose a condition on him not to drink in public, it’s the equivalent of asking him not to breathe.

“He has a compulsion to drink and no matter how long the prison sentence, that compulsion returns.”

Ms Osborn said Dickinson has spent more than six years in prison since the Asbo was first imposed in 2004.

Recorder Holborn told Dickinson his prolific record was one of the longest he had seen in his criminal justice career.

He continued: “All your problems lie with alcohol.

“The problem the court has is that time and time and time again you get subjected to orders and you breach them.

“It doesn’t matter what I do. I suspect almost inevitably that when you are released, you will breach and you will come back.”

He added the least jail time he could impose was six months on each breach, to run consecutively.