FRIEDRICH GRUNWALD, accused under the Larceny Act of fraudulent conversion
of £3,250,000, is allowed out on bail. Two young men who were brought before the magistrates' court in Pershore, accused of taking Is. 21d. from a tramp, were refused bail, and kept in gaol for two months awaiting trial. 'What do the people who adminis- ter justice in this city,' Mr. Justice Finnemore asked, when their case came up before him, 'think bail is intended for?' and he went on to dismiss the excuse the police gave--that the military authorities would not guarantee the appearance of one of the men, a marine, at the trial—as non- sense : 'it seems to me to be the height of absur- dity and injustice.' Similar injustices are being perpetrated almost every day. The situation is made all the more absurd by the fact that the country's prisons are grossly overcrowded. It should surely be possible to issue a general direc- tive to police and magistrates that bail is only to be refused when there are positive grounds for suspecting (as apparently there were not, in this case) that accused will go into hiding—and then only when the offence is sufficiently serious to warrant such treatment.
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