TERM IN PRISON FOR BOOKMAKER

Southland Times, Issue 25514, 7 November 1944, Page 3

TERM IN PRISON FOR BOOKMAKER

Judge’s Reference To Post Office

(P.A.) CHRISTCHURCH, Nov. 6.

“This case has shown that an important department of State, the Post and Telegraph Department, has assisted your criminal business and your intercourse with those 570 law-breakers who did business with you. Your business must have come to a complete stop—it just couldn’t have gone on—without the facilities of the Post Office, said Mr Justice Northcroft in the Supreme Court this morning when sentencing Arthur Leonard Albertson to 12 months’ imprisonment with hard labour for carrying on the business of a bookmaker.

“The Post and Telegraph Department allowed you, for your criminal purposes, three telephones, two post office boxes, and a telegraph code address,” continued his Honour. “It handled all your very large postal, telephonic and telegraphic traffic. It must have known yours was a bookmaking business and that it was actively assisting in it by serving as a go-between of you and your customers.” “SPORTMEN’S ASSOCIATION”

Addressing Albertson, his Honour said: “In your case alone it was shown that you have been doing business with at least 570 bettors. But yours is by no means the only bookmaking business in the country. It was shown that this illegal business is sufficiently extensive and bookmakers so numerous that they have banded themselves into an organization for their mutual benefit, an organization, by the way, which they have the impudence to call the ‘Sportsmen’s Association.’ The character and activities of this association were not disclosed, but it is a grave danger to the community to have an extensive underground organization, the purpose of which is to promote and protect the breaking of the law.” More serious than a breach of the law was the bringing of the law into disregard or into contempt, continued his Honour. The very prosperity of the bookmaking business was founded upon its affording opportunities, if not inducements, to bettors to break the law.

“The state of the law, whether it is wise or unwise, fair or unfair, in step or out of step with public opinion, is a matter for Parliament and the Government,” his Honour said. The taking of measures to break up the underground network of bookmakers and to prevent breaches of the law by the use of its post offices, its telegraphs and its telephones, again, was a matter for Parliament or the Government. Nevertheless, the courts had a duty to draw public attention to the evidence before them of widespread law breaking and of the facilities, especially Governmental facilities, for the perpetration of those offences. PREVIOUS CONVICTIONS

Albertson had been convicted on the clearest evidence, his Honour went on, and he had carried on a criminal business in a very large way. In the period from January 8 to July 29 last he had paid out to successful gamblers no less a sum than £19,976. The total volume of his business must have been very large indeed. He had undertaken his criminal business deliberately and for profit to enrich himself by crime. Albertson’s record showed that he had been a bookmaker since 1933 and that he had been fined on four separate occasions, £5O, £5O, £75 and £lOO. “Having regard to the extent and profitable nature of your business it is not hard to understand why the fines imposed on you have proved no deterrent,” his Honour told Albertson. “To fine a bookmaker even the maximum amount of £5OO is to do no more than take a small proportion of his illicit earnings by way of tribute. Punishment must prevent or at least should deter. Fines for bookmakers are inept and futile. One might a; well fire a child’s pop-gun at a pack of wolves. “To those disposed to engage in this unlawful but highly profitable business imprisonment is the only deterrent,” concluded his Honour.