JUDICIAL ECCENTRICITIES.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XXVII, Issue 8372, 27 September 1890, Page 5

JUDICIAL ECCENTRICITIES.

The following, from the Liverpool Weekly Courier of July 26, will be of interest to some of our readers, especially Auckland shopkeepers or tradesmen:— THE RECORDER OF LIVERPOOL AGAIN. The Quarter Sessions for the city of Liverpool were commenced at St. George's Hall yesterday, the Recorder (Mr. C. H. Hopwood, Q.C.) presiding in the first Court. In his charge bo the Grand Jury the Recorder said there were several cases where the prisoners were charged with breaking into lock-up shops, and stealing a quantity of goods. It seemed unfortunate that shopkeepers kept a large quantity of valuables in shops that were only protected by a padlock. A little more care in the protection of this class of shops might tend to the good of the community. He hoped that some better means of protecting valuable property would soon be found. A number of prisoners all pleaded guilty and received sontences, the lightness of which, in several instances, causing the prisoners to leave the dock in a jaunt/ manner and quite a merry mood.

NO USE SENDING* HIM TO THE SESSIONS. At the Dale-street Police Court, yesterday, before Mr. J. Kinghorn. deputy stipendiary maw!'' 4 te, David Power, 38 years of agf charged on suspicion of having stolen *iu of bacon. Police-con-stable 983 stated that on Thursday afternoon he met the prisoner in Kensington carrying a handkerchief in which the bacon was wrapped. He explained that he had taken the parcel from his house in Titch-field-street, and he was about to return home with it. As he was not going in the direction of the street named he was taken into custody, and, in answer to the charge, he said he knew nothing at all about the matter. Mr. Kinghorn : Is anything known about the prisoner? The Record Clerk (Sergeant Amick) : He was tried at the sessions in June last, and received one one day's imprisonment. On the day that he went out of gaol he was rearrested for stealing a dolman, and was again sentenced to one day at the sessions just concluded. he was tried on Wednesday last, and discharged. He had been in court five times. Mr. Roberts (magistrate's clerk): Can you find an owner? Detective Grubb : No I should like the prisoner to bo dealt with for not accounting. It is no use sending him to the sessions again. He was sent to gaol for one month with hard labour for not accounting. RECORDER HOPWOOD'S SENTENCES.

Liverpool Quarter Sessions, (says the Courier), under the affable jurisdiction of the Recorder, have for a long time past furnished almost as much merriment as that of the " great Mikado, virtuous man," without, hovever, presenting the redeeming feature of " making the punishment fit the crime," or making it a cause of " innocent" gaiety. Even the prisoners who have come under the paternal dispensation of " Daddy Hopwood,' as ho is familiarly, not to say afl'ectionately, styled among them, have shared the general derision, and have at times made no effort to conceal their hilarity. A striking example of how the Recorder's sentences, under which prisoners are supposed to suffer, causes them rather to rejoice, was afforded at the opening of the Quarter Sessions on Wednesday. It may be considered as a typical example of misplaced leniency. A prisoner who at the last sessions impudently informed Mr. Hopwood that he had stolen a pair of boots " because he liked them," and was sentenced on that occasion to one day's imprisonment, had again the same lenient penalty imposed upon him for the theft of a dolman. The absurd inadequacy of this sentence, which is illustrative of Recorder Hopwood's idea of dealing justice, is emphasised by the fact that the second offence was perpetrated on the very day after the criminal had undergone his previous "punishment." The customary ceremonial of a large number of confirmed criminals who had been many times previously convicted pleading "guilty" to the charges igainnb them, and being let off with light sentences, was witnessed yesterday, and it is in no way surprising that the success which thus attended the prisoners' well-tried tactics for "getting on the soft side of the old man" should have caused them to leave the dock in a jaunty manner, which evinced that they were well pleased both with the Recorder and with themselves. The most extraordinary develop ment of Mr. Hop wood's peculiar policy on Wednesday, however, was the complacency with which, while dealing out mercy untempered with justice to the criminals, he saddled their victims with the responsibility for their depredations. The Recorder's remarks to the grand jury were to the effect that a little more care on the part of shopkeepers in protecting their property was required, rather than more severe repression of habitual robbers. What is needed, according to Mr. Hopwood, is not so much to lock up the thieves as to lock up more securely what they would steal. This is 1 carrying the theory of Victor Hugo's good bishop rather further than the community are likely to tolerate in practice. But the judicial farce is being carried to extreme lengths. Time after time the same prisoners appear before the Recorder, and with no less persistency they are liberated with no other punishment than that of listening to a childish lecture on their bad behaviour. There is no question about their criminality invariably they plead guilty—but no penalty ensues. They are discharged after one day's imprison nsont, only to reappear in the dock on the earliest possible opportunity. The law is thus brought into ridicule, the police are discouraged in their efforts to repress crime, and the public are put to heavy expense in the trial of prisoners when the trial is nothing more than a travesty of justice. No doubt the recorder conscientiously believes that he is acting wisely in the policy he is pursuing ; but the practical result is calamitous in the worst sense. Instead of the law being a terror to evil-doers, it is made an actual incentive to crime, and under the benign sway of Mr. Hopwood, Liverpool has become the happy hunting ground of the reprobates of the United Kingdom, to the scourging of the community and the sore trouble of the guardians of the Queen's lieges.