Judge Tony Adeane: "There is considerable public support for a firm line on tagging."

Tagging the foyer of the Napier courthouse has earned a tagger 28 days in jail.

Judge Tony Adeane, well known for his tough stance on taggers, sentenced Adam Kelliher in Napier District Court yesterday

Kelliher, 20, spent the previous night in custody after pleading guilty to a charge of wilful damage.

When he appeared on Thursday, Adeane said anyone caught tagging in Hawke's Bay would get "short shrift", and to tag a courthouse was "really leading with your chin".

On the afternoon of January 8, a court security guard was looking at CCTV screens and observed Kelliher lean over the balcony of the court foyer and use a sharp object to scratch words into the wall.

Yesterday, Kelliher's lawyer, James Rainger, asked the judge to spare him a prison term.

Rainger said Kelliher had completed 380 hours of community work, which was "quite a good effort", and he was a young man who was "not totally irresponsible".

"I spoke to him at the prison last night and he wondered whether it would be a good idea to write you a letter of remorse. I said, 'Well, you never know, why don't you?' He said, 'I've got one problem, I can't write'."

He said he knew that was "a bit ironic, given that we're here for a graffiti sentencing", but he asked the judge to consider imposing a sentence of community work and supervision "with a view to perhaps assisting him with his literacy problem".

He said Kelliher was a sole-carer of a young child and he had had a wake-up call.

The judge said the question of graffiti was "well-trodden ground in this particular court".

It might be seen "in some quarters" that it was "some kind of idiosyncrasy of my own, that I don't like tagging".

"In fact, the sentiment is not confined in that way. There is considerable public support for a firm line on tagging.

"One only has to look around the city of Napier to see it's mercifully free of this phenomena when other similar communities are not. We haven't achieved 100 per cent success yet, but sentences earlier imposed appear to have some effect," he said.

He told Kelliher his tagging of the courthouse demonstrated "a disobedient and disrespectful personality and if you show disrespect frequently enough you can expect a very firm response".

He said Kelliher had at least half a dozen non-compliance offences in recent history and other convictions for dishonesty.

The provocative nature of his latest offending meant a prison sentence was required, and he sentenced him to 28 days in prison and ordered him to pay $200 reparation.

The judge asked Rainger who would be caring for the child. Rainger said its mother would.

In 2008, Adeane gained renown when he took a hard line on taggers, giving a series of offenders a taste of prison. At the time he said taggers were making Hastings look like a North American slum, and he rejected suggestions graffiti was art or culture.

Graffiti crime in the district halved after he took his tough stance.