High risk teen to get a ‘taste’ of prison life
File image. © Andrew Bardwell
A teen will spend his 18th birthday this Friday in prison to give him a taste of what to expect if he doesn’t quit his offending.
Christchurch District Court Judge Raoul Neave decided on the remand in custody for three weeks when the youth came up for sentence today. The sentencing could not go ahead.
The youth got an encouraging probation report and Judge Neave said he was ready to take a creative and inventive approach with the sentencing on charges of unlawfully taking and getting into cars, theft, driving while disqualified, receiving stolen property and wilful damage.
However, the youth was picked up again yesterday on charges of robbery and having his face covered with intent to commit a crime.
“I was ready to adopt an approach which would enable him to get the assistance he clearly needs,” said the judge. “Imagine my dismay at finding on my desk this morning two further charges committed yesterday.
“That would have to be an act of stupidity the like of which I have not seen in some time.”
The youth’s name is not suppressed but it cannot be reported because the judge does not want his current convictions linked to the latest charges which defence counsel Bridget Murphy says he plans to defend.
The youth wanted released on bail to stay at his mother’s address in Casebrook, and she was in court to support him. Judge Neave refused that and remanded him in custody, but indicated he may be released to live with his mother in three weeks when the various cases come back to court.
“To be perfectly frank, I don’t think a couple of weeks in prison will do him any harm,” said the judge, ordering that he be kept apart from “more seasoned offenders”.
He said he believed that giving the teen an actual prison sentence would be “a disaster waiting to happen”.
“He is a high risk offender who is on a fast track to a life of crime and imprisonment.”
He noted that he had on his desk the sentencing file for the youth’s father in circumstances that must have been pretty traumatic. “He’s not had the best of examples.”
The remand in custody would give the teenager “a taste of where he’s heading” if he did not do something about his repeated offending.
The youth will be back in court on November 7.
Category: Focus
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