A middle-class mother has criticised a judge for failing to jail the teenage daughter who burgled the family home three times.
The daughter - single mum-of-two Jennice Lynch, 19, - stole jewellery and her dad's precious gold watch and at one point showered her own children's toys with glass during a break-in.
Her behaviour led her parents, Ruth and John, to report their daughter to the police and called for her to go to prison.
But a judge decided the teenager should only receive a suspended sentence - which her mum described as a 'joke'.
Jennice lives off benefits and gets financial help from her parents, who bought her a flat and look after her two young children.
But Burnley Crown Court heard she deliberately targeted the family's £300,000 house in Whitworth, Lancashire.
Jennice pleaded guilty to three burglaries, but escaped jail after promising there had been 'a sea-change' in her behaviour.
She was also given a 12-month exclusion order which bans her from going within 200 metres of her parents' home.
Speaking after the case, housewife Mrs Lynch, 45, who has four other daughters who all have professional careers, said: "The suspended sentence was a joke and she will see this as a reason to do it all again. It will either be us or someone else she knows.
"Most people would be ashamed of themselves if they behaved this way but not our daughter. She is uncaring and cold and it's about time she got severely punished, because she needs a wake-up call.
"The thieving has gone on for donkey's years, and going to court was our last resort - we just couldn't go on."
Jennice was the fourth of five girls born to Mrs Lynch and husband John, 46, who runs an energy company.
Troubling signs began early on when nursery staff asked her to leave because of her bad behaviour. When she was 14 she was said to have arranged for her family's Land Rover Discovery to be stolen after she got told off for being drunk.
Mrs Lynch said: "She is 20 in May, yet she doesn't work because she thinks she is better off on benefits.
"She hasn't shown any remorse to anybody. She can be a really nice girl but it is a five-minute thing and everyone who knows her is on guard around her. Life has been hell and it such a waste because Jennice is quite an intelligent girl.
"When we see her she has not got her own clothes on, she's always got someone else's clothes on. You'll get the odd relative or friend saying, 'I've lost this', and then she'll have it on. She'll be blunt with it and say she 'nicked it off so and so'.
"She has got away with a lot more than what some people do and at some point she is going to do something really serious. I was hoping prison might nip it in the bud and make her realise.
"It is horrible as a parent - you always want the best for your kids. When we put her in that flat it was lovely, the other girls were saying we would have loved this as our first flat but she wrecked it. She had idiots in and it was a dump."
In mitigation, defence lawyer Nick Dearing said: "This is a deeply troubled and traumatised young lady," adding that at the age of 16 she had entered into a relationship with a man two decades older than her and had two children.
"It will be difficult for her to ever regain the trust of her parents but there has been a dramatic sea-change in her thinking, her behaviour and her personal circumstances."
Sentencing Jennice to 22 months in youth custody suspended for two years, the judge told her: "Your behaviour has been mean, spiteful, motivated by malice and had caused an enormous amount of distress.
"You have made judgements about your parents and you have done that for reasons, which are, frankly, difficult to understand. These were cunning, well-planned and skilfully carried out burglaries.
"You were engaged in acts really calculated, and it seems, deliberately intended to hurt and hurt it did."