Lucas was 12 when he started shoplifting.

“I started hanging round with the wrong crowd, smoking cigarettes and messing about,” he recalls.

Within a few years, he was breaking into people’s homes. For two years, Lucas, now 24, was a prolific burglar, targeting upmarket homes in the hope of lucrative gain.

Lucas is a Prolific and Priority Offender, part of a group of criminals selected on the basis of the frequency and severity of their offending.

Putting repeat offenders on a rehabilitation programme, in the hope that it will lead them to a lawful life, may not pass muster with those who have suffered the trauma of having their homes burgled.

It can be a devastating experience. The thought that someone has invaded your home and stolen property, some of it irreplaceable, can have a traumatic affect for a long time.

As a burglar, Lucas knew what he was doing wasn’t right, but it wasn’t until he landed in prison for a second time that he decided to sort his life out. With the support of a partnership involving police and Bradford Probation Service, he is now leading a crime-free life.

For Lucas, it all started with a period of shoplifting. “But I stopped doing that for a long time because I was at school and I was behaving,” he says.

At 17, he wanted cash to go ice-skating and clubbing with his friends. “But I couldn’t get the money,” he says. “I had jobs like window washing and gardening, but then in Year 10 I started hanging round with the wrong people. Some of them were stealing cars. I couldn’t drive, but I’d jump in with them.”

His criminal career began seriously when he was 22, and a burglar. He appears embarrassed about his past and is determined to do better in future.

But it took some time before he realised what he was doing was wrong. “Whenever I got drunk I started to get daft. I wasn’t thinking straight,” he says.

Lucas went from burgling commercial properties to homes. Some burglaries were premeditated, others were committed on a whim.

“Sometimes I would plan what I wanted to burgle, but sometimes I’d be walking past and would see if it looked empty. I wouldn’t go in while someone was in,” he says.

He targeted “nice places where I thought they had money”.

“Sometimes I’d get a lot of things, if they had a TV or something, or they had money there,” he says.

The money he made went towards buying food, drink and cannabis. Lucas never considered the upset he caused people whose possessions he took. “I knew what I was doing wasn’t right because this was where somebody lived, but I never trashed up someone’s house,” he says.

Community service and a 12-month stint in prison wasn’t sufficient to end his life of crime, but a recent 16-month spell behind bars has made him re-evaluate life.

“It’s a waste of time being in there, a waste of life,” says Lucas.

With the support of the Integrated Offender Management team involving police and the probation service, Lucas is embarking on a new rehabilitation programme. It’s now more than a year since he committed a crime and, being on licence, he knows he would end up back in prison if he did.

He is studying building site safety at college and has ambitions to run his own business.

“I am getting older. I just want to change and make something good of my life,” says Lucas.

Detective Inspector Mark Long, Bradford Integrated Offender Management co-ordinator, says the principle behind working in partnership is to share information and provide a co-ordinated approach to preventing criminals re-offending.

“It’s about what works for the individual. If Lucas wants to be supported and get his life back on the straight and narrow, that is what we will work as a partnership to deliver,” he says.

“An offer of support through the services available in Bradford will be given to all offenders identified under the scheme. This includes offenders managed by the criminal justice partners through a court order and those currently unsupervised.

“If the offender does not accept, all agencies will work together to control the individuals’ offending behaviour. This can include anything from being placed in a hostel away from Bradford, to being visited regularly at their home address by local Neighbourhood Policing Teams.

“The account of Lucas shows that things are possible if offenders are prepared to make change and the right support is in place. There are clear benefits for Lucas, but what must not be overlooked is the reduction of victims of crime through reduction of offending.”