The 23-year-old man, who The Courier has decided not to name to protect the identity of the victim, appeared in the Ballarat Magistrates Court on Friday. 

The man pleaded guilty to two charges of unlawful assault, burglary, possessing methamphetamine and 15 counts of theft. 

Police prosecutor Leading Senior Constable Clint Prebble told the court on September 1 2017, the guilty man and victim were at their Ballarat home, where a verbal argument took place at 7am. The victim would not give the 23-year-old man a cigarette, which "agitated" the man, who punched him in the face multiple times. 

"(The assault) resulted in him having visible bruising to both his eyes and a swollen forehead," Senior Constable Prebble said. 

The man was arrested at 10.30am on the same day, with 30 grams of methamphetamine and two knives found in his backpack. 

On October 17 2017, the man entered Kmart in Stockland Wendouree, and grabbed a black shirt and shorts off a rack. He made his way to the toy area, and changed into the clothing before leaving. 

Two days later he returned to the same store, and a staff member told him he was banned from the store. The employee's watch then fell on the ground, which the guilty man stole and ran off. When the Kmart employee caught up with the man, he turned around and punched him in his neck and ear. 

During a spree of shop thefts, the guilty man stole a Samsung Galaxy tablet from Myer in Sturt Street on May 15 in 2017, valued at $500. He returned to the store at 1.40pm the next day, and took two more Samsung Galaxy tablets, with a combined value of $639. 

The man's defence lawyer told the court she believed that the 23-year-old man's ice and cannabis use had contributed to his offending, and his thefts from shops were actually a step down in severity from previous offending. 

The man was consider unsuitable for a community corrections order, with a report stating he had a "blase attitude" to his offending.

Magistrate Ron Saines said the guilty man could have been facing drug trafficking charges, considering the amount of methamphetamine he had.

"This court needs to make it very clear to you that while you're still a relatively young man, if you continue to do what you have been doing, you will spend the majority of your life in jail," he said. 

Magistrates Saines sentenced the man to a total of five months imprisonment, inclusive of the 143 days he had already served in pre-sentence detention.