ESCAPE FROM BORSTAL

Press, Volume XCVII, Issue 28620, 24 June 1958, Page 19

ESCAPE FROM BORSTAL

Prison Term Imposed

(New Zealand Press Association) NEW PLYMOUTH, June 23. The balance of a term of two years and three months’ borstal training being served by Tarena Waita Anderson, aged 20, was replaced by three years’ imprisonment by Mr A. W. Yortt, S.M., in the New Plymouth Magistrate’s Court today.

Anderson pleaded guilty last week to a charge of escaping from Waikeria and to 13 charges involving car conversion, breaking and entering and theft. Mr Yortt said t that Mr G. A. Nicholls, S.M., had stated in Invercargill recently that the public, the police, and the prison authorities were getting “fed up” with the number of escapes and, although he referred to the Invercargill Borstal, the same remarks ap Pj ied here with equal force. The Magistrate said it had become the duty of the Courts to impose sentences that would discourage persons like Anderson fiom escaping and from the crimes that invariably followed. On August 23, last year, Anderson had been sent to Borstal and had still two years and three months to serve when he escaped, the Magistrate continued. The Courts had no power to sentence a person undergoing borstal training to imprisonment at the expiry of their term of training.

“In fact, no sentence of any kind is allowed to be cumulative on a borstal sentence, and all the Court can do is to extend your period of probation for a period up to 12 months,” Mr Yortt said. “It follows that young offenders escaping from borstal can suffer no increased penalty and it may well be that borstal trainees are aware of this. This may be a factor contributing to the number of borstal escapes. “I don’t intend sending you back to borstal because I have a report here which says that you are not wanted back there by the authorities,” he continued.

The report said that Anderson’s return to Waikeria would have a poor effect on. younger inmates for he had not responded at all to training.

The Magistrate said that in March last year Anderson had been given three years’ probation for car conversion, breaking, entering and theft, and in August had been sent to borstal for three years for the same offences. “I have come to the conclusion that only a substantial term of imprisonment will suit your case,” he told'Anderson.

Only 20 inches of rain fall each year on Waimea. Hawaii, a coastal town just 15 miles away from the world’s rainiest spot. Mount Waialeale, where in a recent year 624 inches poured down.