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THE FOUNDERS OF THE COMMONWEALTH OF AUSTRALIA
1900
It's not the golf ball thief who is mugging justice
In April 2002 Tom Utley wrote an article and compared the way in which two cases were dealt with by the British Criminal Justice System.
Reviewed by David Hughes-Jones, Adelaide Sept 2006
Tom Utley recorded that for 10 years, before he was sent to prison John Collinson, a 36-year-old father of two showed great enterprise and made a modest income by donning a wetsuit and flippers and nightly recovered golf balls from water hazards at golf clubs all over the country. He then sold them for about 50p each to a company that cleaned them and sold them to golfers.
Golfers have always understood that where golf balls were concerned, the rule was "finders keepers". If a few were lost, one also found a few belonging to others.It never occurred to anyone that it was a crime to keep those found. Losing balls was a recognised part of playing the game and ownership of a lost ball would pass to its finder.
But it seems the fact that Mr Collinson found balls on an industrial scale changed matters.Collinson and his helper, Terry Rostron, had recovered 1,158 balls on the night when they were arrested at Whetstone Golf Club, Leicester by the police who charged them with theft.
If it is OK to find and keep a single ball, why should it be wrong to bag 1,158? Few if any Golf Clubs would have recovered the balls themselves if Mr Collinson had not.
Mr Collinson was not charged with criminal damage or endangering wildlife by entering the ponds on the golf cours and nobody suffered from his activities unless one is concerned about golf-ball manufacturers, who prefer people to buy their balls new, rather than second-hand.
Mr Utley records that in previous years, at least two other cases identical to Mr Collinson's have come before the courts - and both were sensibly thrown out.
However the jury at Leicester Crown Court took a different view , and the Judge Richard Bray sent Collinson to prison for six months and ordered Rostron ( his companion in the crime) to pay £400 compensation. The Judge had warned the two defendants before the hearing that if they insisted on the expensive business of trial by jury in the Crown Court, rather than allowing their trivial case to be dealt with by magistrates, he would deal harshly with them.But they had every right to a jury trial and they must have assumed that no British jury would be foolish enough to find them guilty of any crime and the case would be thrown out. They were mistaken, but no one expected this outcome including the defendants!.
Mr Utley compared the treatment of Mr Collinson and associate by the Criminal Justice System now functioning in Britain with the way four young defendants in the Damilola Taylor murder case were treated. It seems that Tom Utley has no quarrel with the not-guilty verdicts which acquitted all four on the flimsy evidence offered by the police, however he was concerned by the way the courts treated these youths in the past;
They apparently had convicted of crime after crime ,and it was quite clear that they would go on committing more crimes for as long as they remained at large.
"Child A took a car without consent and escaped with a conditional discharge and a six-month disqualification; he assaulted a police officer and suffered no more than an order to pay £50 compensation.
Child B was fined £20 for taking a car; when he did it again he was given a conditional discharge; for a later theft, he was given a 12-month supervision order and a three-month parenting order; for criminal damage he was made to go to an attendance centre for only 18 hours; for assaulting care workers he escaped with a £30 fine and was bound over to keep the peace for 12 months.
Child C: burglary, supervision order; criminal damage, conditional discharge; affray, eight-month detention and training order.
Child D: robbery, 12-month supervision order; theft, 12 hours at an attendance centre; assault, supervision order; another assault, another 12 hours at an attendance centre; burglary, released on bail"
Mr Utley feels that If society needs protection from anybody, it needs it from these youths,rather than Mr Collinson.
As they were led into court each day, Child A and Child B, sang gangsta rap songs showing no respect whatever for the Court or Law. and Mr Tom Utley believes that most citizens would agree that they should be taught to respect the law the hard way - in jail.Its unlikely they will learn respect if allowed to go free to continue their life of crime. Meanwhile an honest citizen like Mr Collinson is locked behind bars.
Each of these boys is a mini-crime wave in himself. Yet almost every time the police have caught them, the courts have released them to offend again. No wonder they feel that they have nothing to fear from the law.
Mr Utley points out that. according to the Audit Commission, some seven million offences are committed by under-18s - a quarter of all crimes and questions whether the country can continue to afford the sort of compassion that the Courts display in dealing with young people found guilty of crimes.
