The summary of facts showed Kells visited various stores earlier this year and bought items including Nike shorts, Pokemon trading cards and underwear, Harry Potter Lego sets and a Polaroid camera.

He was also involved in taking a radar from one locked car and an iPad from another, worth a total of $2,500. The crime was committed at the end of last year and the beginning of this year.

Kells’ criminal history, mostly for fraud, runs to 15 pages.

Judge Crowley acknowledged Kells’ horrific past.

“Any judge looking at the sentence I’m about to give you will say, ‘Wow, that was pretty out of line with everything else he’s gotten, I’m not going to give him a chance like that again.'”

The judge said he was concerned Kells told a report writer he stole because he couldn’t make a living. But he also said Kells should be given a sentence other than prison or house arrest.

Judge Crowley told Kells he had the chance to continue doing the same thing and spend the next decade blurring in and out of prison as he had before, or he could do something different. His lawyer, Rufus Hancock, asked for probation.

After speaking to Kells’ wife, Judge Crowley said he was very impressed with her and her devotion to her husband.

Kells was found guilty of the charges and sentenced to 12 months of intensive supervision; the judge told him: “I really trust you, please don’t let us down, don’t let him down.”

Kells, who had been detained for more than eight months, left court elated, thanking the judge for handing down a “fair but harsh sentence” and promising to do better.

“There are a lot more positive things in your life than some of the people standing there (in the defendant’s dock),” Judge Crowley told him. “I wish you good luck.”

Catherine Hutton is an Open Justice reporter based in Wellington. He worked as a journalist for 20 years. Waikato Times and RNZ. Most recently, he was working as a media consultant at the Ministry of Justice.