HOUSEBREAKERS SENTENCED

Taranaki Daily News, 10 June 1930, Page 9

HOUSEBREAKERS SENTENCED

SERIOUS VIEW Off CRIME TAKEN. By Telegraph.—Press Association. Auckland, Last Night. “Housebreaking is very rife at the moment and I must take a serious view of your case,” said Mr. Justice Smith in the Supreme Court this morning in sentencing Henry James Dickman, labourer, aged 29, and John Booth Prohl, farm-hand, aged 20, for breaking and entering and theft at Auckland, “You are not very old, but you have very substantial lists of convictions,” added His Honour, after enumerating each prisoner’s- convictions, “and the charges on which you now appear before the court relate to housebreaking. “Dickman,” said His Honour, “your convictions are such that I am justified in declaring you an habitual criminal, and I propose to take that course. You will be sentenced to two years’ hard labour on each charge, the .sentences to be concurrent, and be declared an habitual criminal., “Prohl,” added the judge, “you are only 20 and you will have leniency, but as you are at present serving a sentence of two years’ imprisonment you must receive such a sentence now that will extend it. You will be sentenced to be committed to prison for the purposes of reformative detention for a term not exceeding three years, the sentence to bo concurrent with your present sentence,.”