Luke John Boschat (24), of Great Union Road, was subject to a community service order and needed consent from Probation to leave Jersey.
He told probation officers he was going to Liverpool for a weekend and permission was given for him to travel. However, he actually flew to London and then on to the Dutch city, which it was pointed out in court is notorious for its drug culture.
The Magistrate’s Court was told that the Probation service would not have given him consent to go to Amsterdam and that his actions constituted a breach of his community service order.
Boschat also breached the order a second time when he refused to do community service work at the community garden at First Tower because he was ‘embarrassed’, the court heard.
In late June the defendant was sentenced to 90 hours of community service as a direct alternative to three months in jail for grave and criminal assault. He committed what was described as a ‘gratuitous act of drunken violence’ and left his victim with a scar on his face on 26 February in Bath Street at about 2.45 am.
He was ordered to pay £1,000 compensation. The court heard at the latest hearing that he had paid back £430 to date.
Advocate Jean Marie Renouf, defending, said that it had not been Boschat’s idea to go to Amsterdam. He said that ‘others organising the trip made changes’. He also said that the defendant accepted he ought to have
been frank and honest with Probation.
With regard to his refusal to work at First Tower, the lawyer said the location caused Boschat ‘embarrassment’.
He pointed out that Boschat had completed 50 hours of the 90-hour community service order ‘which showed he is able and willing to work’.
In sentencing Boschat for the two breaches, the Magistrate, Bridget Shaw, said that community service was a ‘ridiculously
good deal’ as an alternative to custody.
‘I take the circumstances of you going to Amsterdam instead of Liverpool very seriously. The chief probation officer would not have given you consent to travel there with its association with drugs. That was a breakdown of trust,’ she said.
With regard to his refusal to work at First Tower, she described his actions as a ‘very serious breach’. ‘The scheme becomes unworkable if people say I will work there, but I won’t work there,’ she added.
Although Mrs Shaw noted that Boschat had done 50 hours of community service, she said that there was no necessity to correlate the prison sentence with the hours completed.
