A career criminal and crack addict was sent to prison for two years yesterday after carrying out a string of break-ins and thefts.

Homeless Kendra Minors, 42, confessed to stealing $430 cash and $110 worth of jewellery in five separate incidents last summer -- just a few months after completing an 18-month stretch in prison for several counts of cheque forgery.

The court heard how Minors' summer spree of petty theft began on the morning of July 17 last year when she stole a wallet containing $320 after entering the home of Vincent Stewart on Wellington Road, St George's.

She was later arrested and admitted the theft to Police.

But just three days later Minors broke into a house on Cove Valley Road and demanded cash from the elderly occupant. She only left when he told her he would go to an ATM machine later in the day.

When she returned that night her victim still had no cash but forced her to flee after screaming for help.

A week later Minors was at it again, this time breaking into a car parked outside a house on Cove Valley Road. She managed to get away with $20 cash and $110 in gold jewellery from the glove compartment before being spotted by the owner of the vehicle.

In August Minors struck again, this time breaking into another house on Cove Valley Road in the early hours of the morning and stealing $50 cash from a bag.

And in the same month she once again approached the home of Vincent Stewart on Wellington Road and stole a wallet containing $40.

Minors, whose career in crime first began back in 1983, has been in and out of prison for the past 17 years. She begged Chief Justice Austin Ward to allow her to keep her freedom so that she could solve her drug problem.

"The treatment in prison doesn't really help,'' she said.

"In prison you don't get the treatment and it would be better if I was going to meetings on the outside. I have somewhere to live with my cousin in St.

David's and I am sorry for what I have done.'' But Mr. Justice Ward insisted that Minors would be better off in prison where she would be forced to go on a drug counselling programme.

Sentencing her to two years imprisonment for each offence, to run concurrently, Mr. Justice Ward said: "They will make you go into the programme but after the treatment, when you come out, you will still have to be counselled and put in touch with people who can help you.

"But if you don't make the effort to help yourself by doing something positive then there's nothing we can do for you.''