Youth Aged 16 Has 104 Convictions

Press, Volume CVIII, Issue 31774, 3 September 1968, Page 26

Youth Aged 16 Has 104 Convictions

(New Zealand Press Association) AUCKLAND, September 2. A 16-year-old youth with 104 convictions was sentenced by Mr Justice Hardie Boys today to Borstal training.

The youth, Christopher ■John Elmore, had been found guilty by a jury on August 23 of five charges of burglary and was appearing for sentence.

Counsel, Mr B. K. Shenkin, submitted that if Elmore were sent to Borstal he could well be the subject for some revenge. It was known that young criminals feared Borstal more than prison. In Bors tai there would be people with whom Elmore had associated, who now knew that Elmore was a police informer. Elmore’s term in Borstal would be extremely difficult, Mr Shenkin said. He asked his Honour to consider probation, which was recommended in the probation re port.

His Honour said he very rarely took a stronger line than that recommended by the probation officer but he was satisfied in the public interest and in Elmore’s own interest that he must go back to Borstal.

The report and the rider to the jury’s verdict had both reflected the use to which Elmore was put by the police at his own invitation, his Honour said. But Elmore would not have been charged with the five burglaries and no jury would have found him guilty if that was all there was th it. Elmorp had simply double-crossed the

police and his co-offenders. His Honour said he would like the jury which convicted Elmore to know something it was, not permitted to know at the trial—that Elmore, at the age of 16, had already had 104 convictions, 61 of them for burglary and nine for attempted burglary. Almost all of these had occurred in the last two years.