Woman jailed for shoplifting spree

Chloe Neville pleaded guilty to four counts of theft and one of assault

A serial shoplifter who targeted stores in Coventry city centre has been jailed for 14 weeks.

West Midlands Police said after it was alerted to items being stolen from a shop in Fairfax Street on Friday, officers identified Chloe Neville as the prime suspect and tracked her movements on CCTV.

The force added it was able to link the 39-year-old, of no fixed address, to a number of other shop thefts in the city centre in September and October.

Neville admitted four counts of theft and one of assault and was jailed at Coventry Magistrates' Court on Saturday.

It comes as a House of Lords inquiry found shoplifting was not being tackled properly across the country.

There were 443,000 incidents recorded last year by police forces, but the inquiry heard they were "a drop in the ocean" compared with the true scale of the problem.