A PRISONER trashed his cell in a desperate bid to be moved to a jail nearer his home, a court heard yesterday.

Jamie Stanley caused almost £30,000 damage when he was being held at the young offenders' institution last April.

Stanley, from Hull, was serving a two-year sentence at the now-closed jail in Northallerton, North Yorkshire.

Teesside Crown Court heard that he was in the segregation unit after being assaulted a week after being locked up.

He wrenched a bar from a window and smashed up tables, a toilet, his sink and CCTV cameras in his cell.

"There was nothing in there that wasn't destroyed," said prosecutor Graeme Gaston. " Anything that could be smashed was.

"The defendant said he wanted to be transferred back to Hull, which is where he is from. That has happened.

"He said his understanding was that damage to his cell would allow that to take place, and that's why he did it."

Graham Silvester, mitigating, said: "For the want of a better phrase, it was a temper tantrum of some magnitude."

Mr Silverster said the 19-year-old was isolated and struggled to cope with problems encountered since childhood.

Jailing him for a further ten months, Judge Howard Crowson told Stanley he was optimistic for his future.

In a letter, the teenager told of his determination to put his problem behaviour behind him when released.