SERIOUS OFFENCE REPEATED

Evening Star, Issue 22973, 2 June 1938, Page 18

SERIOUS OFFENCE REPEATED

STRANGE CIRCUMSTANCES OF CASE REFORMATIVE DETENTION ORDERED Before His Honour Mr Justice Kennedy in the Supreme Court this morning James Alexander Spence Tapp (37) appeared for sentence on a charge of committing incest. Mr O. G. Stevens, who appeared on behalf of the prisoner, said that the probation officer’s report showed that there was a definite weakness on the part of the prisoner. This particular offence was the second offence on which the accused had been committed. Except for this matter, the prisoner was regarded as an industrious, honest, and a quiet-living man. Counsel submitted that in regard to this particular type of offence, prisoner showed definite weakness of a mental and physical type. Mr F. B. Adams, appearing for the Crown, commented on the very strange circumstance that after the offence of incest had been committed the same parties were living under the same roof for a very long period. It seemed inevitable under such circumstances for the offence to be resumed. Mr Adams suggested that repetition, under such circumstances, was by no means of the same gravity as the original offence. It was to be hoped that from now on these two persons would never bo under the same roof again. His Honour said that prisoner had already been sentenced by him to a long terra of imprisonment for a similar crime. His Honour took quite a different view of the present case. The other party had now reached a more mature age, and the damage was earlier done. The remedy really was that prisoner should not again come into close association with the other person. His Honour said that under the circumstances he thought the proper course was to impose a short term of reformative detention, so that, if the Prisons Board thought fit. prisoner might be early released, subject to a condition that he did not live under the same roof with the other person. His Honour ordered that the prisoner ho detained for reformative purposes for a period of eight mouths.