§ MR. JAMES O'CONNOR (Wicklow, W.)To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department if he has considered the case of James Nicholson, who was sentenced at the South - Western Police Court some ten days ago to fourteen days imprisonment for stealing a loaf of bread; whether he has been able to order his discharge; and, if so, on what date was the prisoner released.
(Answered by Mr. Secretary Akers-Douglas.) I have made inquiry of the magistrate who dealt with this case and find that it is true that the prisoner, whose age appears to be nineteen, and not seventeen, as stated in the Question, declared to the policeman who arrested him that he was hungry and that stealing was the only way in which he had been able to live. It appeared, however, that he was charged with an offence last month and allowed to go to a Salvation Army Home. That he left this place after a few days because, according to his own account, he did not like the people or the work, and that previously to this he had given up respectable employment that was open to him. I have also received a letter from the Police Court missionary, to whom the hon. Member referred in his previous Question, in which he points out that the newspaper report of the statement he
† See (4) Debates, cxlii., 1204.468 made in this case is imperfect and inaccurate, and explains that the trouble he had taken about Nicholson on a previous occasion had been of no avail. In these circumstances I see no reason for advising any interference with the lenient sentence passed by the magistrate. I may add that the reports of Police Court cases which appear in the daily Press are necessarily brief, and, in my experience, are often extremely misleading.