BEHIND PRISON BARS

New Zealand Times, Volume L, Issue 11436, 5 February 1923, Page 5

BEHIND PRISON BARS

YOUNG MAN'S RECORD SPENT QUARTER OF HIS LIFETIME IN GAOL. FIVE YEARS HARD LABOUR. Grey-haireil though only thirty-two years of age, Frederick Marshall stood in the dock of the Supreme Court on Saturday morning to receive at the hands of Mr Justice Chapman sentence on three charges of forgery and uttering. It transpired that Marshall has spent the greater portion of the latter half of his life in prison. Mr C. A. L. Treadwell, who appeared for the prisoner, said that his client was 32, and that since the age of 14) years he had spent more time in gaol than out of it. Mr Treadwell desired that Marshall should he given a chance to lead a better life, and suggested that he should be sent bade to Australia, from which country he had been sent here, as his parents lived there and were willing that he should go on to the farm and live with them. His Honour: I don’t consider we are entitled to inflict our criminals on a neighbouring State. Mr Treadwell: But he belongs to Australia, and that is where he ought to be.

Mr Treadwell said that Marshall had what lie had never had before —a chance to lead a better life. Ho had a letter from his mother asking him to go back to liis home. If he did not take the chance now the rest of his life would be spent behind the prison bars. Mr Treadwell read the letter which purported to come from Marshall’s mother. It asked Marshall to return to the farm, where he would be welcome, notwithstanding that he had erred. It said also that his absence and liis failure to write gave his mother- muoh pain and caused her to weep every night. Marshall asked that although his record was bad he should he given a chance to go straight in the future. His Honour said that if he had the least faith in the assurances given lie might do something on the lines suggested, but Marshall’s whole record showed that he had a preference for a course of life that led him to prison. Marshall had spent many years in gaol, and three times he had been declared an habitual criminal. All His Honour could do was to put him in the hands of the Prisons Board. The sentence would be one of five years’ imprisonment with hard labour, and Marshall would be declared to he an habitual criminal.