The Evening Star FRIDAY, AUGUST 11, 1922. BOOKMAKERS AND THE LAW.

Evening Star, Issue 18044, 11 August 1922, Page 4

The Evening Star FRIDAY, AUGUST 11, 1922. BOOKMAKERS AND THE LAW.

Dciuxo the present week there have been bore© races at Riccarton. All over New Zealand interest is taken in the Grand Nationals, and 1 everyone knows that many cases that interest extends from t sentimental to the financial. Act only i those who secure that financial internt per medium of- the totalisator on Riccai ton racecourse is that action legal. But they fprm a very small proportion of those who bet on the results. The others are Abundantly catered for by a multitude of bookmakers in the large centres, and also in the smaller ones. In every place of public resort the cards and charts that the bookmakers issue may be seen absorb, ing the attention of prospective clients who contemplate doing something, when they have made their selection, which will make them joint offenders with the proscribed layer of odds. If a person is proved a bookmaker he is liable under the Gaming Amendment Act of 1920 to a £SOO fine or two years' imprisonment. If a client is convicted of betting with one, the former is liable to a £IOO fine or six months’ impxisonment. That is the law. As far as its observance goes, it might as well) not exist. It is opportune that, on the day the Grand National

Steeplechase was run, the Minister of Justice tabled in Parliament 1 a report in which the Chief Commissioner of Police records officially the hopelessness of enforcing the law against hotting. A few prosecutions were instituted at one time on informations laid under what Parliament intended to bo its most certain lover to shift the bookmaker from the community and confine betting to racecourse totalisators. In every case the evidence was clear. In' every case but one the culprit got off, despite plain directions to the contrary from the Bench. Juries would not convict. The police since have had intermittent recourse to an older Act, finding it, as the Commissioner admits, almost a waste of time to prosecute under a law where the accused can elect to bo tried 1 by a jury.

Tho older Act is the Gaming Act of 1908, which provides penalties for the principal of fines np to £IOO or three months’ imprisonment, and smaller fines only for tho client. Considerable success, says the Commissioner, has attended this alternative minor method. He refers, doubtless, to the proportion of convictions. Magistrates convict where juries acquit, and in this class of prosecution the accused has not the right of choosing to be tried by a jury, for the maximum penalty does not exceed three months’ imprisonment. Section 122 of tho Justices of the»Pcaco Act enacts that “ a. person when charged with an offence winch is punishable on summary conviction by imprisonment for a term exceeding three months, and which is not an assault, may, on appearing before the court, attd before the charge is gone into, but not, afterwards, claim to be tried by a jury.” This section draws the distinction between what is an indictable offence and one which is punish, able on summary conviction. It all depends on the maximum penalty prescribed. But an exception lias been made of mo particular class of offence—that of assault. In such a case a magistrate may give a longer sentence than three months. If Parliament is in earnest about repressing present-day betting, ana is convinced piV)lic opinion .approves, it might add bookmaking to the one other offence for which a maximum penalty of over three months does not entail tho right to be tried by a jury.

The legislation making bookmaking an indictable, offence has had a two years’ trial, and is confessedly a failure. So are prosecutions under the older Act giving summary jurisdiction to magistrates, for, though convictions may have resulted, the penalties have proved no deterrent. Those who know state that the calling of layers of odds is more flourishing row' than ever it was, some estimates being that the business, particularly in Wellington, has doubled m the last year. The only alternative to amending the Justices of the Peace Act seems to he to, lower the imprisonment penalty in the Act of 1920 to three months and to raise the fine to something realty substantial, .even to a bookmaker. It will have to be a big sum.