ADMIRAL MAYNE (Pembroke and Haverfordwest)I beg to ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department whether his attention has been called to the sentences passed by the Recorder at the Central Criminal Court, as published in the Times of the 25th instant, on three boys, aged respectively 15, 14, and 13, of nine and six months' imprisonment with hard labour, for stealing 6s., a chisel, and other articles, from a church and a chapel; and whether the boys, being so young, could be sent to a reformatory instead of to prison with hard labour?
§ MR. MATTHEWSMy attention has been called to this case, and I am now making inquiries into the circumstances, and will inform my hon. and gallant Friend of the result. The boys could have been sentenced to detention in a reformatory instead of to a term of imprisonment with hard labour.