THEFT FROM STATE COAL OFFICE.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 16514, 26 August 1921, Page 7

THEFT FROM STATE COAL OFFICE.

BUTLER'S OFFENCE. TWO YEARS’ REFORMATIVE TREATMENT. Patrick John Butler, a young man, twenty years of age, who pleaded guilty to stealing £2033 4s lid from tho Christchurch office of the State Coal Department, was sentenced to two years’ reformative treatment in tlie Borstal Reformative Institution, Invercargill, by his Honor Mr Justice Herdman when the prisoner was placed in the dock in the Supreme Court today. . Mr M. J. Gresson, who appeared for the prisoner, said that he would be twenty-one years of age in October. His parents were respectable and up to the present time he had borne tho highest character. The offence was committed with an extraordinary motive. The prisoner was brought up in the country. AY hen he left school at sixteen years of age his father—unwisely, but with the best intentions — urged him to find employment in tho town, and he entered the Christchurch office of the State Coal Department. He stayed there for four years. All that time lie was eating his heart out to get back to tlie country. He asked his father to let him go back, but his father thought that it was wiser that he should stay in Christchurch. He had no vices. He neither drank nor gambled. As a junior lie was placed in charge of a receiving machine in the office. It recorded the half-yenrly totals along a line on the fop of tho machine.. He saw the auditor turn the recorder back to zero. The machine was supposed to be rogue-proof, and could nob be turned back to a smaller sum, but could be turned back to zero. The temptation then assailed him. He thought, “Now’s my chance to get back into the country.” He took a large sum, but the extraordinary part of it was that he spent not a single penny. He paid the whole into the Post Office Savings Bank. All had been returned. The only motive was to get back to the country. He received a salary of only £l2O a year, and £60,600 a'year passed through bis hands. He had been trusted on account of his character, and he fqll. And having entered upon the downward course it was impossible for him to pay any of the money back without inevitable*, discovery. Counsel asked that the prisoner should bo admitted to probation or should be sentenced to reformative treatment, but there was a grave risk of reformative treatment having a bad effect on him, not a good effect. ALr W. M. Hamilton, for the Crown in the absence of Mr A. T. Donnelly (Crown Prosecutor), said that the report of the IJnder-Secretary for Mined bore out what Mr Gresson had said in regard to the prisoner’s previous character. His Honor said that he would consider what the head of the Department had said, but the offence was a very grave one, and the prisoner could not be admitted to probation. Fraud? in tlie public service were becoming too frequent. The only way of stopping them was to punish offenders when the crimes were exposed. He would be sentenced to two years’ reformative treatment in the Invercargill institution.