A JUDGE who was reprimanded for saying burglars show a "huge amount of courage" to break into people’s homes has retired.

Peter Bowers, 69, has stepped down as a circuit judge after 49 years in the legal profession.

In 2012, he was strongly criticised after telling a burglar he was sentencing that it took a "huge amount of courage" to burgle someone's home.

Informing the defendant, Richard Rochford, that he would not have the nerve to be burglar, the judge said: "I'm going to take a chance on you, an extraordinary chance, one which I don't often take."

He then passed a suspended sentence, which the judge admitted he may be "pilloried" for.

The remarks prompted Prime Minister David Cameron to comment that burglars were not brave but cowards and their crimes were hateful.

Following an investigation, the Lord Chancellor and Lord Chief Justice upheld complaints about the judge’s comments and issued him with a reprimand saying that his remarks damaged public confidence in the judicial process.

Legal colleagues were supportive of the judge however, with one saying he had been vindicated in giving the offender a suspended sentence when he reportedly "sailed through" the court order issued as an alternative to prison.

A source said at the time: "I think that vindicates the judge, who was unfairly criticised for going this lad a chance because he had already made efforts to beat drugs."

Judge Bowers was criticised again the following year for letting a paedophile walk free because he would “suffer” in jail.

Mark Martin was already on a suspended jail sentence for possessing child porn when Judge Bowers ruled he should not be locked up after police found 48 more illegal images on his phone.

He added: “I think you would suffer very badly in prison and I don’t think, at the moment, it is necessary to send you there."

Judge Bowers was admitted as a solicitor in 1966 and called to the Bar in 1972.

He was appointed an assistant recorder in 1984, a recorder in 1989 and a circuit judge in 1995.

He was the designated civil judge for Teesside from 2008 until 2012.

More controversial comments by judges and barristers

* In 2013, prosecuting barrister Robert Colover was heavily criticised after he described a 13-year-old rape victim's behaviour as "predatory". The Office for Judicial Complaints also examined comments about the girl made by the judge, Nigel Peters QC, in his sentencing remarks following a trial in London.

* Sitting at Norwich Crown Court in the same year, Judge Mark Lucraft refused to send a paedophile who abused children aged seven and eight to jail because it would cause "suffering" for his family.

* In 2007, Oxford judge Julian Hall jailed a window cleaner for two years for the rape of a ten-year-old girl. In his summing up he said the ten-year-old's clothing was "provocative" and that she looked 16. Earlier the same year, he suggested that another victim of child sex abuse could be bought a bicycle "to cheer her up".

* In 1993, Judge John Prosser, sitting at Newport Crown Court in Gwent, freed a 15-year-old boy found guilty of raping a 15-year-old virgin and suggested he could pay his victim £500 for a good holiday to "get over the trauma."

* The same year Judge Ian Starforth Hill described the eight-year-old victim of attempted rape as "not entirely an angel herself" and gave her attacker two years probation.

* In 1998, Judge Sir Harold Cassel refused to jail an ex-policeman for indecently assaulting his 12-year-old stepdaughter, who had learning difficulties. He said the man was driven to assault the girl because his wife's pregnancy had dimmed her sexual appetite, causing "considerable problems for a healthy young husband".