YOUTH AND CRIME

Timaru Herald, Volume CLIII, Issue 22474, 8 January 1943, Page 4

YOUTH AND CRIME

Comment By Judge “These two young men are a striking example of the extent to which young people are growing up with no idea in the world of respect for other people’s property,” said Mr Justice Callan in the Auckland Supreme Court, when imposing sentence on Kenneth Russell Trevarthen. aged 17 (Mr Aekins), and Leslie Weatherly, aged 22, on charges of breaking and entering and theft to which they had pleaded guilty. Trevarthen was also dealt with on a charge of conversion of a motorcar. There was an element of meanness about Weatherly’s thefts, said his Honour, in that they were from other young men in a boarding establishment and from the house of people who had befriended him. Prisoner was sentenced to reformative detention for a period not exceeding 18 months. To a statement by counsel that Trevarthen’s father was prepared to look after him until the youth entered the Army, his Honour said it was possible that military discipline might make a decent man of him, but young men in the Army could not choose their companions in tents and on troopships, and if the experiment suggested by counsel did not succeed the youth would be a danger to other young men and their property. He ordered that the prisoner be detained in a Borstal institution for three years.