The Punishment To Fit The Crime

NZ Truth, Issue 1150, 15 December 1927, Page 6

The Punishment To Fit The Crime

The astounding ease with which, to all appearance, youths with butcher-boy wages may satisfy Great Panjandrum notions at the expense of motorists, reveals a scandalous ineptitude in the laro of this country. DAY after day, in issue upon issue of daily newspapers in New Zealand, the statistics of youths and men charged with 'wrongful conversion of 'cars —often -with comparative impunity—are swollen with the recording of I incidents involving: wrecked, damaged or abandoned cars. And the maximum penalty is three months! Three months' imprisonment for a wanton act, involving considerable inconvenience to, the owner, irrespective of financial loss! True, where a car has suffered damage, the owner has a civil remedy and, moreover, the police may oharge the temporary thief with mischief. But in cases where the offenders are mere youths between the ages of, say 18 and 22 years, the monetary impost is a boomerang which more often than not rebounds on to the purses of their unfortunate parentß. Rarely does a fine, howeoef substantial, constitute a corrective measure »o far as concerns the youthful miscreant. A pack of youthful toughs, known to the police of Dunedin as "The Chevrolet Gang," possessed themselves of master keys to the ignition locks of Chevrolet cars, and lor twelve months swaggered about the contiguous countryside of Dunedin in motor-cars belonging to other people. Cars were abandoned in all sorts of neighborhoods, and under varying conditions of damage or misuse. And the corporal impost is three months, according to the provisions of the present Act! Surely, the Legislature can observe the definite absurdity of the situation? Most assuredly/, should its members remark the need for removing a dangerous shortcoming in this section of the criminal laro, more particularly in regard to the infliction of adequate punishment. If not, then the common observance of the laws of property may be lightly cast aside, and the rule of criminal opportunity hold dominance, its perpetrators dismayed but slightly at the thought of a lenient sentence being eventually imposed at the close' of an irresponsible ning at the expense of others. And, perhaps, given eloquent counsel in defence and an altruistic bench, the name might be suppressed! Unless . . .