Opinion ID: 2402932
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: When some suitable employment has been secured for him in advance.

Text: Note that this contemplates that the inmate is serving a sentence for a misdemeanor or a felony, and nowhere is provision made for the parole of a juvenile delinquent. Section 14, Chapter 27-A, provides for the parole from a state school, but a juvenile held in a reformatory is not afforded the protection of any laws relating to parole. Referring again to Section 87, Chapter 27, which relates to the transfer of incorrigibles, this section provides: It shall be the duty of the officers of the reformatory for men to receive any boy so transferred and the remainder of the original commitment shall be executed at the reformatory for men. That being true, a boy so transferred, although in the reformatory, would actually be serving a state school sentence, and presumably would be subject to the rules of the state school regarding parole. The very last paragraph in the Gosselin Case, 141 Me. 422, 44 A.2d 886, is significant upon the question of parole. There the Court said: The statute under which she is held carries appropriate provisions for her parole,   . Another very serious and important objection arises to Morton's commitment. Section 67, Chapter 27, is the only statute which authorizes commitment to the reformatory for men. It reads in part as follows: When a male over the age of 16 years and under the age of 36 years is convicted by any court or trial justice having jurisdiction of the offense, of an offense punishable by imprisonment in the state prison, or in the county jail or in any house of correction, such court or trial justice may order his commitment to the reformatory for men. A sentence imposed under authority of the preceding section is an indeterminate one. It presupposes that the candidate for the reformatory stands convicted of an offense punishable in the state prison or in the county jail. It will be recalled that it was in 1943 when the legislature struck out the paragraph relating to aggravated offenses by juveniles and provided that no municipal court shall sentence a child under the age of 17 years to jail, reformatory or prison. Now bearing in mind that a sentence to the reformatory is based on Section 67, Chapter 27, a respondent standing before a municipal court can be sent to the reformatory only if he is subject to a jail offense. However, since 1943, no child under the age of 17 years is subject to a sentence to jail or prison, so that the condition necessary, under § 67, for the imposition of an alternative or indeterminate sentence in the reformatory does not exist. To repeat in different words, if a boy between the age of 16 and 17 years is not subject to the imposition of a jail sentence by the municipal court, he cannot be given an alternative or indeterminate sentence in the reformatory; and striking out the word reformatory in the statute involved, added nothing at all to the power of the municipal court. This is another way of emphasizing the point, that the clause or make such other disposition as may seem best for the interests of the child and for the protection of the community has nothing to do with sentencing, other than to the state schools for boys or girls, because the same section which speaks of other dispositions is met by the sentence that no municipal court shall sentence a child under the age of 17 years to jail. By the prohibition contained in § 6, Chapter 146, a boy between the ages of 16 and 17 cannot be sentenced to jail by a municipal court. It, therefore, follows that there is no power in the municipal court to impose an alternative sentence to the reformatory for men. To briefly recapitulate, it is my opinion that powers of the municipal court in juvenile cases are derived solely from Section 6, Chapter 146, and that nowhere in this section is authority granted to sentence Morton to the reformatory for men. Moreover, in the reformatory can be detained only persons who have been convicted of a crime, and Morton, by force of the statute, was not convicted of a crime. The only way Morton could be sent to the reformatory legally would be to first send him to the state school for boys, and then transfer him to the reformatory for men, as an incorrigible, assuming that he were in that catagory, under the provisions of § 87, Chapter 27, R.S.1954. My opinion is that the petitioner was illegally sentenced and committed; that his imprisonment is unlawful and that he should be discharged from custody.