REFORMATIVE DETENTION

Wairarapa Times-Age, 22 December 1943, Page 3

REFORMATIVE DETENTION

SENTENCE IN KOPUARANGA CASE. OBSERVATIONS BY CHIEF JUSTICE. (By Telegraph—Press Association.) WELLINGTON, This Day. “I have often thought that there should be some kind of institution, neither a prison nor a mental hospital, but something betwixt and between,” commented the ' Chief Justice (Sir Michael Myers) in the Supreme Court today before passing sentence on a man who had pleaded guilty to indecently assaulting' a nine-year-old girl. “If there were such an institution, offenders of this type should be sent there indeterminately for proper treatment and should not be allowed at large unless the scientist in charge is of the opinion that they may be allowed to go without menace to the community; but we have no such institution, and in the circumstances .there is only one course the Court can take.”

The prisoner, Henry Alfred Rossiter, roadman, 57, who committed the offence at Kopuaranga on December 8, was sentenced to two years’ reformative detention. Mr C. W. Nielsen, who appeared for him, said he was a married man with six children, and had never been before the Court before. His Honour said it was not merely a question of punishing the offender, but of making it plain that such offences could not be committed with impunity. Such offences might be attributable to a disease of some kind, but it was in the prisoner’s own interest that he be kept out of the way for a time.