HOUSEBREAKING

Timaru Herald, Volume CXLI, Issue 20445, 16 June 1936, Page 3

HOUSEBREAKING

SEVERAL PRISONERS SENTENCED By Telegraph—Press Association CHRISTCHURCH, June 15. Two young men, William John Davidson and Malcolm Leitch, were sentenced by Mr Justice Northcroft in the Supreme Court this, morning for breaking into a shop and theft. Davidson was sentenced to 12 months’ imprisonment and Leitch was placed on probation for two years. It was stated that Davidson had been released from the Borstal only last December. A suggestion that the prisoner suffered froifi a form of kleptomania was made by the judge, when sentencing Harry Thomas Betts, aged 38 years, for housebreaking and theft (four charges), and attempted housebreaking with intent to commit a theft (two charges). Betts was sentenced to three ye ars hard labour. “Yours is a very difficult case,” said the judge to Betts. “You are before me for sentence on ten separate charges, and have admitted breaking into 24 different houses. You have a long list. You have had reformative detention for three years, and recently 15 months’ hard labour. You had only been released when you set out to commit this series of burglaries. They are not of a dangerous character, but rather an aggravated form of sneak thieving. It seems to be a* form of kleptomania, but as society is ordered at present there is no adequate treatment for this condition. You cannot harry the community in this way. You will be sentenced to three years hard labour.” Three youths who had committed a burglary were each sentenced to three years’ detention in a Borstal Institute. They were Cecil Hedley, Gilchrist Winston, Mearil Yeatman, and Leslie William Rasmussen.