JAI PEE JUSTICE. Levying Fines on Babes and Sucklings.

Free Lance, Volume II, Issue 91, 29 March 1902, Page 8

JAI PEE JUSTICE. Levying Fines on Babes and Sucklings.

THE race of Dogberry flourishes like the green bay tree in this colony of New Zealand, In fact, we can produce specimens capable of wilder and more extravagant absurdity than Shakespeare ever dreamt of, and whose actual performances are almost incredible outside a lunatic asylum. What do you think of this from an Upper Thames newspaper ?— " At the Paeroa Police Court this morning, before Messrs. Colclough and Cook, Justices, three Karangahake children, aged five, six, and seven years, were charged with the theft of 18s. from a dwellinghouse, and were fined £1 and costs each." * • • Really, the fatheaded policeman who arrested these tiny toddlers and haled them to Court, and the brace of Justices who gravely and solemnly fined them for the dreadful crime of housebreaking, are quite buried in such a small place as Paeroa. They might tra\el on the fame of an exploit so exquisitely funny. * • • Still, they are entitled to a certain amount of consideration. Had they only been concerned for the \ indication of outraged justice, and not been possessed of bowels of compassion, it is quite conceivable that they might ha\e treated these desperate malefactors of five, six, and seven summers to the utmost rigour of the law. As the "Observer" says, "the only wonder is that they did not give these notorious criminals six months' imprisonment without the option of a fine, or commit them for trial at the Supreme Court, so that they might be more se^erely dealt with." * ♦ * Howe\er, the law is not quite advanced enough for these judicial wiseacres. As a matter of fact thensentence is quite illegal, for a child of five years cannot be held responsible for a criminal act. It is a peculiarity of British jurisprudence that the Paeroa justices never heard of. A particularly green variety of police constable and Jai Pee seems to be grown in the Upper Thames. Only a few days prior to the case we have just mentioned, a little dot of five years was placed fn the dock at Waihi on a charge of arson. In that instance a lawyer was retained for the defence and he was able to convince the Bench that a charge could not lie against a child of such tender yeais, and so it was dismissed. * » * Is it not high time that some radical change were made m the selection of persons for appointment to the Commission of the Peace ? As matters stand, it seems to be largely a question of political favour and the very cheapest kind of favour going. No kind of mental qualification appears to be looked for. It is common report that men have been made justices who could not even write their names, and nothing is more certain than that the blunders and vagaries of our Jai Pees furnish the papers with their funniest anecdotes and keep the country in r oars of laughter.