A JUDGE refused to sentence three men involved in a street fight in Canterbury because he was "too furious."

Judge Nigel Van Der Bijl said the three needed to be sent to prison to be taught a lesson that their friends would also understand.

He stressed; "Sometimes law-abiding people, older people, even some younger people, do not go out because they could be picked on by mouthy white men carousing around looking for somebody to beat up.

"These people need to be sent to prison to be taught a lesson and also so that their friends, and I bet they have friends like this, can understand that if they get involved in this, they go to prison. How are we going to stop our streets being destroyed almost, by this kind of attitude?"

The hard-hitting comments followed applications for pre-sentence reports on Canterbury men Aaron Wiles, 23, of Wife of Bath Hill; James Goldfarb, 25, of Mandeville Road; and Stephen Nolan, 25, of The Terrace.

All had been committed for sentence at Canterbury Crown Court by the city's magistrates for assault causing actual bodily harm and common assault.

Just as Edward Grant made the first application for Goldfarb, Judge Van Der Bijl, having rebuked Goldfarb for smirking in the dock, questioned Mr Grant's justification for a report to put forward an alternative to custody.

The judge asked: "How can there possibly be an alternative to custody in this case. This is the kind of loutish behaviour that makes our towns unliveable in." He said he wasn't interested in reports and had very little interest in the defendants' backgrounds.

Nina Ellin, for Wiles, also asked for a pre-sentence report. She specified Wiles's domestic situation as a man with a young family on a relatively low income for whom a custodial sentence had various effects for the court to consider. "And whose fault is that," came the reply from the Bench.

Responding to Miss Ellin's comment that the incident was a "one off," Judge Van Der Bijl said: "How is it some so-called perfectly respectable person suddenly decides to pick on people in the street and beat them up.

"Let's be real about this. It arises from the kind of attitude that no doubt he has adopted when he has been out in the past.

"If these three men think that picking on two men and beating them up is macho, it is despicable, cowardly, pathetic. That is one side of it. The other side is that it is ruining our towns. I am not going to deal with the sentence of this case because I am too furious."

He concluded by saying he would order reports and suspected the case would probably be dealt with by another judge. All three were bailed to return to court for sentence on March 7.