Youth’s 'hard time’ in jail

Press, 22 May 1987, Page 4

Youth’s 'hard time’ in jail

A young man appeared for sentence in the District Court yesterday afternoon with his face bruised from a beating he had suffered from fellow prison inmates in the morning.

Craig McAlister, aged 19, unemployed, had a “hard time” in prison, which was where he had spent his last four birthdays, said his counsel.

Counsel sought a term of periodic detention for McAlister, who appeared on charges of burglary, theft, and breach of periodic detention. Judge Anderson, however, said that if McAlister had a hard time in prison there was only one way to stop that — to stop offending. McAlister had had opportunities to seek help

but had painted the Court into a corner as far as sentencing was concerned, said the Judge. McAlister was sentenced to six months jail on the burglary charge, with concurrent terms of a month’s jail each on the charges of theft and breach of periodic detention and a month in lieu of outstanding fines. SPENCER PARK THEFTS Owen Andrew Wiley, aged 20, was sentenced yesterday to eight months jail for his part in a widely publicised series of thefts of holidaymakers’ property at Spencer Park last summer. The police had had numerous complaints from the area, and on February 6 alone property worth $llB2 was taken from motor-vehicles, said, the Judge.

“This defendant was part of that expedition and, in fact, forced entry with a pair of scissors,” he said. On another occasion, Wiley was seen interfering with a car and admitted he was trying to take the wheels, said the Judge. Wiley appeared on four charges of theft — one relating to a flatmate’s radio cassette recorder — and a charge of attempted theft. The Judge noted that Wiley had had periodic detention in 1983 and 1984 yet his level of offending- had not diminished. A community-based sentence was neither appropriate nor adequate, he said.

Wiley was sentenced to concurrent terms of eight months jail on two of the charges and three months'

jail on the other three charges. (Before Judge Anderson) CREDIT CARD FRAUDS

A woman, aged 17, was fined a total of $5OO when sentenced on Wednesday on seven charges of using a Farmers Trading Company credit card, issued to another person, to obtain for herself a pecuniary advantage. The defendant, Vanessa Carole Rangi, an unemployed hairdresser’s assistant, had pleaded guilty to the charges on Tuesday and had been remanded a day for a probation report. Her counsel, Mr H. C. Matthews, had said Rangi had an airline ticket to leave for Australia.

The Judge fined her $lOO on each of five charges, and convicted and discharged her on the other two.