The 17-year-old was the first in the district to be caught by a CCTV-rigged house and was last week sentenced at Pontefract Magistrates' Court to a four-month detention and training order after pleading guilty to burglary.

Det Insp Stuart Spencer said there are many capture houses all over the district and warned criminals that it is only a matter of time before they catch another.

He said: "We have several of these houses throughout the Wakefield district with the intention of arresting offenders who are intent on committing burglary.

"Criminals should be aware that we are using these houses and it will happen again.

"The capture houses is one of a number of tactics that we are using throughout the Wakefield district to bring offenders to justice."

The court heard that the teenager, who cannot be identified for legal reasons, broke into a capture house on June 4 – just six days after he was sentenced for similar offences, when he was made subject to a two-year ASBO and an intensive supervision programme.

Rosalind Wood, mitigating, said he had not had time to change his ways through the supervision order before he was snared by the police trap.

Det Insp Spencer said he is committed to catching the offenders who commit burglaries but added that the public vastly overestimates how many are carried out every day.

He said: "We recently did some work with the public, asking how many burglaries they thought were carried out every day across the district. Most estimated about 200. In reality we have an average of five a day.

"Each of those burglaries is looked at by me on a daily basis – that's how seriously we treat it."