ALARMING STATE

Waikato Times, Volume 124, Issue 20832, 16 June 1939, Page 9

ALARMING STATE

YOUTH OF PRISONERS EFFECT ON SOCIAL WELFARE BREAKING AND ENTERING CASES (By Telegraph.—Press Association) WELLINGTON. Thursday Comment on an alarming state of affairs as affecting the social welfare of the community was made in the Supreme Court by the Chief Justice, Sir Michael Myers, when seven of li prisoners for sentence appeared on breaking and entering charges. With the exception of one prisoner none was more than 27 years of age. His Honour made his remarks before sentencing Jack Morgan, aged 19, a rigger, on two charges of breaking, entering and theft, and Jack Reid, aged 23, labourer, on one charge. “ There is one observation I wish to make with regard to the calendar,” said His Honour, ** and it is appropriate that I should do it now, because i see one of you, Morgan, is 19 years and four months, and the other 23 and a-half. On the calendar to-day there are no fewer than seven cases in which the Court is called upon to sentence offenders for the offence of breaking and entering. You two arc the first to come before me. In another case which I shall have to deal ■with directly the offender is 27 years of age. In yet another, where a young man has pleaded guilty to five different charges, he is 20 years and three months. In still another the offender is twenty years and ten months, and in another he is 24 and nine months. In the last case the offender is aged 40, but in every case except one the offender is, one might say, just entering the threshold of manhood. It is an unpleasant and very alarming state of affairs, and it gives food for reflection as a matter affecting the social welfare of the community.” Morgan, who had not been previously convicted, was admitted to probation for two years on the special condition that his place of residence and the place and nature of his employment be subject to the approval of the probation officer. Reid was sentenced to two months’ imprisonment with hard labour; Claude -Cecil Watts, aged 24, labourer, to three years’ reformative detention on one charge of breaking, entering and theft, and two charges of breaking and entering with intent to commit theft: Charles Raoul Francis Gawn, aged 20, labourer, for breaking and entering with intent to commit theft, to three months’ imprisonment with hard labour; and Gordon Thomas Wilkie, with whom Gawn appeared, six months’ imprisonment with hard labour; Raymond Julian Jorgensen, aged 20. clerk, on five charges of breaking, entering and theft was remanded until Monday, the Judge 6aying that prisoner’s actions, which were deliberate and cunning, had been calculated to get some innocent employees of the same company into trouble; Ronald McGowan Kennedy, platelayer, for breaking and entering a counting-house by night, and theft, received two years’ reformative detension.