The tragic life of one of Liverpool's most prolific shoplifters was revealed in a TV documentary.
At 43-years-old, Janine Clough's "staggering" criminal record now stands at 71 convictions for 239 different offences.
The latest came after she was caught stealing a trolley full of meat and slashed the manager of a Lidl store with a broken coffee jar.
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This week Clough, of Liverpool Road, Huyton, was jailed for two years and 11 months over the shocking attack at the supermarket in Kensington.
Liverpool Crown Court heard the violent drug addict has been breaking the law time and time again since she was just 11-years-old in the late 1980s.
She was even banned from Liverpool city centre, for threatening a security guard with a used syringe and spitting in the face of a teenage shop assistant at Boots.
However, TV viewers got to see a different side to Clough and gain insight into her problems when she appeared in the Channel 4 documentary Prison.
The second series of filmmaker Paddy Wivell's award-winning documentary featured women serving time at HMP Foston Hall in Derbyshire.
First airing in January 2020, the second episode focused on the fact that half of the 300 women in the jail were suffering the effects of long-term emotional, physical or sexual abuse, and how a remarkable new prisoner-led therapy group was seeking to help them.
Central to the episode was the desperately sad story of the compelling inmate Clough, who in between playing the class clown and joking about there not being enough drugs in prison, ended up confronting her past as a sex worker and drug addict.
She did this with the help of inmate Sonia Whitton.
Whitton led a course, called Healing Trauma, to help other prisoners including Clough, who was struggling to come to terms with childhood trauma.
After going through the course - said to have achieved startling results in reducing depression amongst inmates - Clough finally opened up about her past, revealing she was once kidnapped while working on the streets and held by a group of men for four days.
In the episode, Clough was seen to struggle to open up when she first attended the course, and the following week, despite her keenness to help others, avoided talking about her own difficulties by causing distractions.
She had a mishap with a kettle while making a cup of tea, and said she planned to sue the prison.
Clough told the camera: "I was making a drink and as the water spilled out on my foot and now I've got a claim for about £2,500."
Fiddling with a toaster, she went on: "Next week I'm going to make out I've been electrocuted. I know what I'm going to do."
But before she got the chance to go through with the plan, she was pulled to one side to review her recent conduct.
The prisoner was praised for her hard work and for addressing her drug issues, with staff telling her she would be categorised as "an enhanced prisoner", or someone who is "really good" with positive behaviour in the prison.
The documentary said she had only been enhanced once before in the 20 years she had been in and out of prison, and her confrontational behaviour meant she had spent a lot of time in the segregation unit.
Clough arrived at the next Healing Trauma session elated, but as the course turned to discussions about self-harm and suicide, said she couldn't cope with the conversations.
Just minutes into the session, her mood dramatically dropped and she put her head in her hands, before fleeing the group.
Whitton told the camera: "I think it's hit a raw nerve with Janine today. She's a class clown - but when you get down to the nitty gritty, I don't think she feels safe. And if she doesn't feel safe, then she's gone."
The two women were later shown having a heart-to-heart in Clough's cell, when Whitton told her she would like her to open up and promised to support her.
She said: "You defer it, then you go and look after someone else. But if you want to talk about it, we can talk about it. If you want to cry, then cry. I ain't going to judge you."
In one chat to the cameras, Clough directly addressed her anger issues and how they related to her shoplifting and drug intake.
Asked about her anger, she said: "I can go from being 0 to 100 to 0 again. I suppose because I've not deal with my s*** innit.
"Because I've not dealt with my s*** I get angry and then anger causes problems. I will go out to do a shoplifting, normal people will get three months for a shoplifting, I get two years because I get angry and end up doing the security guard in. So yeah, it is a big problem..."
Asked how she normally dealt with her issues, she candidly admitted that she used drugs to "block it out".
With three Healing Trauma sessions remaining, viewers saw Clough pledged to open up about her past, but she soon retreated back to her old behaviours.
After a confrontation on the wing, she could be seen to refuse to engage with healthcare and began self harming.
Whitton arrived at her cell and took Clough, who was covered in blood across her neck and hands, for a chat.
Clough confessed: "This is everything building up. I let everything build up, build up, and then I just explode."
Having refused to speak with prison staff, she was asked by the documentary team whether she had been "through a lot".
Clough answered: "Depends what you call a lot innit. To some people it's a lot, to others it's not. It's just part of it all, isn't it. The life you lead, drugs and that.
"You can't take drugs and have a good life. It doesn't work like that. I've had s*** happen, but hasn't everyone?"
After the cameras were switched off, Clough decided to continue and shared a harrowing past experience.
The producer could be heard to say: "When you say kidnapping, for someone like me, you say "f***ing hell, that's so serious.".
Clough replied: "It was serious. I was in a violent relationship, he owed a lot of money for drugs. I was working the streets to pay his drug debt off and support our drug habit.
"Someone picked me up for business, I went back to theirs, and there was four other geezers there. I got held for three or four days."
After being asked if she was badly treated, she responded: "Yes."
Clough could then barely speak as she broke down, saying: "I've been through loads. We'd be here all week if we start talking about it."
Later, when the documentary team caught up with Whitton, she said Clough had progressed "loads" while on the Healing Trauma course.
She said: "Janine come on leaps and bounds... There's hope for anybody.
"If you've got somebody in front of you and they think there's no hope, then where's the rehabilitation?"
Shortly before her release, Clough could be seen chatting with Whitton, saying she finally understood why she turned to drugs.
And as she was collecting her things to be released, they embraced in a hug, before Clough collapsed in tears on her shoulder.
Before the show ended, there was also a touching and unexpected moment, when Clough used her limited canteen money to buy sweets for the director's children as a parting gift.
Sadly, after leaving Foston Hall, Clough returned to her old ways, and it was through the haze of crack cocaine that she struck at the Lidl store.
Just two days earlier she was handed a community order for assaulting an emergency worker, but on July 22 last year she took £140 of meat.
After a struggle with shop security, she grabbed a coffee jar, smashed it on the floor, and used a shard of glass to slash at her wrists and neck.
Staff intervened to try and and protect Clough, but while being led to a staff room she lashed out at her victim, leaving him with a 15-inch wound to his back, which was fortunately not deep, but required cleansing and him undergoing tests to see whether he had contracted Hepatitis C.
Sarah Griffin, defending, said Clough had been in "a very abusive relationship", which ended just before the incident, and "unfortunately she resorted back to drugs and that's why she has ended up in the situation she has".
Urging the judge to spare Clough jail, Ms Griffin said: "Her real concern is her mother is out in the community and is extremely unwell. This defendant is desperate to get back into the community to be able to assist her."
Ms Griffin said Clough had continued working with the Probation Service while in custody and when not in lockdown, had been keeping herself busy as a gardener in the mornings and gym orderly in the afternoon.
She said: "She is on methadone but more importantly she is on medication for epilepsy and deep vein thrombosis, she takes a series of painkillers, she has medication for anxiety and panic attacks, and for asthma and COPD. She is not a well woman at all."
Ms Griffin said if released, the council would be responsible for finding temporary accommodation for Clough, and while it wasn't possible to say exactly where she would stay, the long term plan would be to find her independent housing, but with intensive supervision and assistance from Housing First.
The judge, Recorder Ian Harris, said Clough told a probation officer she was suffering from mental illness at the time, but she didn't have a formal diagnosis and as of January 4, she wasn't "open to mental health services".
Clough, who appeared in court via video link from HMP Styal, will serve half of her 35-month sentence behind bars, before she is released on licence.
Due to time already served on remand, that is likely to happen before the end of this year.
At that point, once again solutions will have to be found if she is to stay clear of crime and be allowed to remain in the community.
You can watch the episode of Prison featuring Janine Clough here
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