PENALTY FOR VIOLENCE

Press, Volume C, Issue 29503, 3 May 1961, Page 16

PENALTY FOR VIOLENCE

Judge Warns Youths (N.Z. Press Association) AUCKLAND, May 2. The Courts must now consider long sentences of imprisonment in cases involving the use of force, violence or threats by a group of young persons acting in concert against some law-abiding blameless citizen, said Mr Justice Turner in his charge to the Grand Jury at the start of the new Auckland criminal sessions today. His Honour was commenting on whether sentences previously given in such crimes as rape, attempted rape, assault, mischief. robbery (mostly by groups of young persons), breaking and entering and receiving, as well as negligent driving causing death, have been sufficient and whether the public interest now demanded revised and heavier sentences.

Concerning the use of physical force by young persons in pushing "inoffensive fellow citizens about,” his Honour said it had, perhaps, become too generally assumed that nothing more than a term of Borstal was likely to await young persons found guilty of such offences. “Those offenders who are 19 or 20 or younger may regard themselves as warned that the mere fact they are under 21 will not necessarily entitle them to leniency in this Court,” he said. "Any tendency to organise gang operations is liable to be the subject of appropriate and stern punishment.”