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‘Career thief’ sent to prison

A man previously at the top of Warren County’s most wanted lisgted was sentenced by Judge Gregory Hammond on Friday.

Ralph Pratt, 52, last known address Barker Street in Jamestown, N.Y., found himself at the top of the county’s most wanted list in August, according to an Aug. 13 Times Observer article, “for a probation violation stemming from charges including retail theft, criminal conspiracy and defiant trespass”

Pratt’s attorney, Nicholis Milardo, asked the judge to sentence Pratt to a sentence in the county jail.

“Twenty-one of these crimes has been related to a drug or alcohol issue,” said Milardo, who also said that Pratt has attended “twelve drug and alcohol group meetings” while incarcerated and has become a jail trustee, working in the kitchen as a “trusted person” within six days of being incarcerated.

Pratt, Milardo argued, had made a point of “doing the time, not letting the time do him,” and said that any safety issues with Pratt could be addressed within the Warren County Jail setting.

District Attorney Rob Greene and Hammond both disagreed.

Greene said during sentencing that Pratt had at “twenty-four different times committed a criminal act, and five separate times committed a felony. He is a career criminal.”

“A career thief is just exactly what you are,” said Hammond.  “There’s just no other way to look at it. It would be mitigating a sentence to keep you in the county and you haven’t earned that.”

Pratt, who has an extensive history of theft in Warren County, was sentenced Friday for retail theft and defiant trespass to a total sentence of two to four years in a state correctional facility with no boot camp or risk recidivism reduction incentive eligibility. He was ordered to have no contact with his victims, Tops and Walmart, and was barred from entering either business in the future. He was also ordered to submit his DNA to the state repository and pay the $250 fee thereof, and to pay restitution in the amount of $1,279.68, $2,000 in fines, court costs, and $500 in fees.

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