§ MR. ALDEN (Middlesex, Tottenham)To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department whether he can see his way to recommend the reduction of the sentence on Henry Byne, a first offender, eighteen years of age, who on 9th March was sentenced by Sir Ralph Littler to twenty-one months' hard labour, and is now in Borstal prison.
(Answered by Mr. Secretary Gladstone.) The circumstances of this case have already been under my consideration. The prisoner was convicted of two serious offences of house-breaking, committed on different dates, and the case appears to me to be a proper one for the special treatment which the prisoner is receiving at Borstal. The Commissioners of Prisons have repeatedly called attention in their Annual Reports to the uselessness of short sentences in the case of prisoners for whom the Borstal treatment is considered desirable, and I regret that I do not feel myself justified in advising any reduction of the sentence in this case.