CAR CONVERSIONS

Manawatu Standard, Volume LIX, Issue 48, 25 January 1939, Page 5

CAR CONVERSIONS

FIXING THE PENALTY. A DIFFICULT PROBLEM. Per Press Association. WELLINGTON, Jan. 24. The matter of punishment for the offence of ear conversion is the subject of a statement by the Minister of Justice (lion. H. G. R. Mason), today. It was a matter for Magistrates, and not one in which the Administration could properly interfere, but the Minister pointed out that a difficulty was that about half the offenders were under 17, and 80 or 90 per cent, under 23. A grave responsibility rested on the judicial officer who sent a young offender to prison for a first offence. The extent to which the current aversion to the imprisonment of young persons went was shown by the Criminal Justice Rill, introduced recently in the House of Commons by the Home Secretary. In that Rill it was proposed to make it illegal to imprison any person under 16 and to provide also that no one under 23 should be imprisoned, except after certain exhaustive inquiries. The Minister points out that a serious danger is created by car conversions, and points out that there is a responsibility on car drivers to see that the car's are left locked or so disabled that they cannot l>e driven off. and he repeats bis appeal to motorists to take the simple jmecaution required.