A SERIAL drugs offender narrowly avoided a jail sentence after he was found carrying drugs.

Joseph Kibble, 32, of Stowood Close, Headington, pleaded guilty to possessing a quantity of cannabis and was sentenced at Oxford Crown Court on Friday.

Kibble sunk his head in his hands as a court Judge told him that in light of an earlier suspended sentence, the starting point for him would be prison.

He said: “There is a myth that if you get towards the end of your suspended sentence somehow or other it makes it less likely that you will go to prison.

“If that is what you think you have get it badly, badly wrong. It would not be unjust to send you to prison today, far from it.”

But in a dramatic turn Judge Peter Ross said he would instead defer his sentence and subject him to drugs checks instead.

Kibble received the deferred sentence for three months in which he will provide regular drugs tests.