CAR THIEVING

Dominion, Volume 34, Issue 42, 13 November 1940, Page 6

CAR THIEVING

It is to be hoped that the warning issued from the Wellington .Magistrates’ Court Bench by Mr. J. L. Stout yesterday that he would deal severely with car thieves in future will be taken seriously. It should be some consolation and encouragement to sorely-tried catowners to have from the Bench at least the recognition that this. evil is becoming, to quote Mr. Stout, “a serious menace to the community. There have been so many protests about the prevalence of cat thieving—to give this offence its proper name—coupled with strong demands for sterner measures for dealing effectively with it, that some commensurate reaction on the part of the authorities might reasonably have been expected. Something certainly has been done. The law has been tightened up. but the continued prevalence of these offences demonstrates very clearly that the tightening-up process has not gone far enough. All that magistrates can do at present is to raise the severity of the punishment imposed to tbe maximum ot their statutory discretion. What is wanted- is some more dias.tic provision in the penal code that will make car thieves think twice about interfering with other people’s property.