Harry Hankinson, once branded Britain's most prolific shoplifter, has died aged 78 in HMP Wakefield while serving a 14-year sentence for attempted rape and sexual assault, closing out a criminal career spanning more than 50 years. His case highlights how a persistent offender evaded lasting consequences for decades before finally being convicted of serious sexual offences against vulnerable women, and his death in custody is now being examined by the Prisons and Probation Ombudsman.

Hankinson, from Miles Platting in Manchester, racked up 523 convictions since 1970, 433 of them for theft, and repeatedly evaded reform despite prison terms, curfews and shop bans, often blaming an unproven claim of kleptomania stemming from a head injury at the 1970 World Cup. In 2021, Bolton Crown Court jailed him for attacks on elderly and vulnerable women, including forcing a 61-year-old hospital patient into a sex act and repeatedly assaulting a woman he had first targeted in 2017, who later fought him off with a fork. Greater Manchester Police described him as a "sexual predator" who preyed on vulnerable victims, and further allegations, including from a care home carer, emerged during the investigation.