A JUDGE has warned a cannabis-smoking offender he could waste his life in prison if he continues offending.
Billy Sharratt, 24, was sentenced at Liverpool Crown Court after pleading guilty to dangerous driving and possessing cannabis in relation to an offence.
He appeared by video link from HMP Brinsford, where he is already serving a prison sentence. The latest offences related to a vehicle driven in Billinge on August 6, 2025.
Danielle Leigh, prosecuting, told the court that Sharratt had a child passenger in the vehicle, failed to stop for police and then ran away on foot.
Aggravating factors included his previous convictions and the fact he was on licence when the offence happened, the court heard.
Sharratt had already been jailed for 38 months at Bolton Crown Court in January for offences including burglary, theft and dangerous driving.
Those offences were committed two weeks after the incident for which he was sentenced on Tuesday, September 22.
He had also received a six-week sentence for driving without insurance and driving while disqualified in relation to the same incident. However, he had not been prosecuted for dangerous driving, although he had offered to plead guilty, the court heard.
Judge Simon Medland KC said: “I have come across some messes in my time.”
He added that the case showed “the left hand doesn’t know what the right hand is doing”.
Judge Medland said the matter “could and should have been dealt with at that (January) hearing”.
He also asked: “How does it take from August 2025 to June 2026 to charge him with dangerous driving when that was plainly him as the driver and plan what he had been doing?”
The court heard Sharratt had “implied somebody else was the driver”, meaning the case had to be investigated.
His defence told the court there was “still a lengthy delay” in the case. It was said his guilty plea was his next best mitigation.
The court was told he was “grateful for his time in prison”, which had “caused him to grow up essentially” and given him a break from smoking cannabis.
Sharratt had completed available courses, including maths and English qualifications. He had also started training to become a personal trainer and worked as a cleaner on the prison wing.
The court heard he wanted to become an industrial worker.
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Judge Medland said: “What on earth is to become of Billy Sharratt? He has got pages of previous convictions, he steals other people’s property, he crashes other people’s cars, surely there’s more to his life than that?”
He added: “My daily experience in this court is cannabis is an extremely dangerous drug that destroys people’s mental health and wellbeing” and causes “psychosis” and people being “too lazy to do a day’s work”.
Passing sentence, judge Medland told Sharratt: “If you continue smoking cannabis and stealing property (and) […] driving dangerously you will find the sentences will get longer and longer and longer, and one day you will wake up as a man in middle age who has wasted his whole life by being in and out of prison. You plainly have more to offer than that.”
The judge said the prosecution “should and could have dealt with this earlier” and that this reduced the sentence.
He said the sentence would have been 15 months after a trial, but was reduced to 10 months because of Sharratt’s guilty plea.
Sharratt was also disqualified from driving for two years and five months. That period will be added to his existing disqualification of 72 months and 20 days.
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