ENFORCING THE LAW

Evening Post, Volume CXL, Issue 39, 15 August 1945, Page 6

ENFORCING THE LAW

"There is one observation I would like to make," said the prosecuting officer in the Magistrate's Court this .week, when a number of persons charged with offences under the Gaming Act were being dealt with. "If bookmakers could not get a telephone they could not carry on their business." This comment draws attention to a strong and outspoken statement made by Mr. Justice Northcroft towards the end of last year, when sentencing a Christchurch bookmaker to a term of imprisonment. Addressing the prisoner, his Honour said: "This case has shown that an important Department of State, the Post and Telegraph Department, has assisted your criminal business and your intercourse with those 570 law breakers who did business with you. Your business must have come to a complete stop—it just couldn't have gone on —without the facilities of the Post Office. The Post and Telegraph Department allowed you for your criminal purposes three telephones, two Post Office boxes, and a telegraph code address. It handled all your very large postal, telephonic, and telegraphic traffic. It must have known yours was a bookmaking business, and that it was actively assisting in it by serving as a go-between for you. and your customers." The reply made by the Department, not by the Ministerial head of the Department, was really no reply at all. The Department claimed that it had no knowledge that the person concerned was a book-" maker and that he had not obtained the telephones and other facilities in his own name. This excuse scarcely held in view of the fact that he had been convicted and fined on four previous occasions. Even in the absence of precise knowledge, however, the Minister has complete power to deprive bookmakers of all departmental facilities. The regulations specifically empower the Minister to act on his own opinion and, in the numerous cases brought by the police, there is surely ample grouixd for suspicion. At present every application, for a telephone is, or should be, carefully scrutinised to determine the order of urgency of installation. In this scrutiny the possibility of bookmaking should be kept in mind. With existing installations there is, no doubt, more difficulty. The Department may, on a conviction being entered, take steps to deprive the person convicted of facilities, but it seems clear from the numerous cases recently reported, and from the remarks made by the prosecuting officer this week, that there is a weakness in the system of allocating telephones and other facilities. If the police convey their suspicions to the Post and Telegraph Department that its installations are being improperly used, then surely the Department should act immediately. There should be no need to wait for a conviction. With close collaboration between ( the Police and Post and Telegraph Departments bookmakers and their agents should find it increasingly difficult, if not impossible, to secure the telephonic facilities without which they could not carry on.