Clearly, You Don’t Want To Mix With The Wrong Crowd…

…but wait! Aren’t you yourself ‘the wrong crowd’?

A Plymouth offender refused to do community service because he was worried about mixing with other criminals on the same programme at a farm.

Perhaps he’s a criminal mastermind, a renowned safe cracksman, a gentleman thief like ‘Raffles’?

Oh. Maybe not:

Shawn Gray, aged 27, was ordered to do unpaid work after being caught for a street attack because he boasted about it on Facebook…One of the victims' friends saw a post in which he said: "I had a fight last night outside Blockbuster. I kicked the **** out of two guys. What a fight. I won. What a night. Hey!"Gray, then of Elliott Road, Plymouth, and Nicholas Lawes, aged 21, from Rolle Street, Exmouth, admitted causing actual bodily harm and were both jailed for nine months, suspended for two years, ordered to pay £200 compensation and do 175 hours unpaid community work.

And it was the community work he balked at:

He was taken back to court because he missed a series of appointments on days when he was due to work at a farm near Plymouth.

His reasoning is….well, let’s let his mouthpiece tell us, eh?

Mr Edward Bailey, defending, said the problem was not the type of work but the other offenders on the same programme.

He said: "He was terrified of associating with fellow criminals and felt he would be better working at a charity shop or with the RSPCA. He has stayed out of trouble for two and a half years and moved from Exmouth to Plymouth to keep away from criminal associates.

"The reason for some of the absences was that he got a job at the new River Cottage business in Plymouth over Christmas but has since been laid off.

"He also lived near the Tamar Bridge and he had no benefits coming through and it would have been a two hour walk to get to appointments.

"He has now moved to a new address in Cattedown which is only 20 minutes away."

The judge wasn’t too impressed with that.

Restaurant worker Gray, of Cattedown, was ordered to do an additional 50 hours by Judge Graham Cottle, who told him he had to do as he was told by probation officers.

The judge told him: "Would you rather work on a farm or spend 23 hours a day in a cell? Reading the circumstances of the original case you were extremely fortunate to receive a non custodial sentence. Here you are in breach of your suspended sentence by failing to do unpaid work and you advanced as a reason that you did not want to be with others who had been before the courts."

In the comments, someone claiming to be his sister seems to think that this is a perfectly reasonable thing:

by Angelfalls666

“im sorry but that is my brother and he has always been around criminals as he has done a few big sentences jail dont bother him and its not like the are making it out to my brother might be a criminal but he has never been involved in drugs which is why he didnt want to work on the farm as he originally said to his probation officer he didnt have a problem working with criminals he just had a problem working with smackheads and speed users as he wasnt into that and i was ther when my brother came home that night and it didnt go down the way the victims are saying as my brother was hardly involved but because my brother grew up in exmouth everyone knows who he is and he was made out to be one of the most feared blokes in exmouth by the police..... there is alot of people who dont give my brother a chance and they are to quick to judge him cause of his past but he has changed his life round and got a lovely son and is finally settling down he dont need to be judged anymore at the end of the day everyone in this world will make some stupid mistakes but does that really mean that we have to judge everyone we know cause if thats the case then we are all doomed”

I think, sweetie, that if we don’t judge young men who….wait, that’s not right, he’s not a ‘young man’, is he? He’s twenty-seven years old…assault strangers, then yes, we’re all doomed.

Not for the reasons you might think, though.