BRIDEWELL SYSTEM OF PROCESSING YOUTHS FOR JAIL

The Bridewell is a conveyor belt ferrying young Dublin drug-users off the
streets and into prison.

Drugs and Crime Correspondent, looks at the busiest District Court in the State

The boy, with legs too short to reach the grey and pink linoleum, sat
watching with a swollen black eye as the men and women in suits talked to
their clients. Beside him, a young woman struggled with a toddler. Further
down the bench, two boys took turns at holding each other in headlocks.

This is the fag-end of the criminal justice system. The noise in the
waiting area between Courts 44 and 45 of Dublin's Bridewell District Court
rarely falls below a din. In the fog of cigarette smoke, there are huddled
conversations between defendants and solicitors, children crying and mobile
phone conversations.

Everyone is in uniform. The solicitors carry folders and wear suits. The
gardam dress in official blue shirt sleeves. The defendants wear regulation
sports gear, covered in the labels of sports multinationals as they stand
before the judge-only court.

This week, a report described the Bridewell as a dumping ground for the
young Dublin men from the poorest areas of the city. More than 70 per cent
of people prosecuted in the courts are from districts described as "most
deprived". The average district court defendant is a 24-year-old man
charged with stealing property.

The study, by a team from Trinity College Dublin and led by the Reid
Professor of Criminal Law, Prof Ivana Bacik, looked at records from the
three Bridewell courts for 1988 and 1994.

Called Crime and Poverty in Dublin, the study said the courts had been
reduced to a system of "processing young males from deprived areas". And
defendants with those addresses proved 49 per cent more likely to be
sentenced to prison than those from other parts of the city.

Refurbished eight years ago, the Bridewell courts are cleaner and brighter
than some of the higher courts. The three courts processed more than 27,000
cases in 1994, an average of more than 100 a day. "The number of cases is
extraordinarily high," the District Court President, Judge Peter Smithwick,
says. The court tries cases every week day of the year, apart from August
and Easter and Christmas. The courts hear remand applications on a
Monday-to-Saturday basis, including holidays and bank holidays.

Judges find the system frustrating, says Judge Smithwick, especially at the
Children's Court level, where no suitable places are available for children
who are already getting into trouble.

"I think that an awful lot of people who end as criminals in the District
Court are very deprived, not only in the sense of material deprivation, but
many of them have had very troubled early lives."

The judges assigned to the Bridewell are "under a huge amount of pressure",
he says. "The sheer volume of cases means that each case has to be dealt
with very quickly."

In Court 44 on Thursday afternoon, Judge Murrough Connellan heard five
cases and more than six remand applications in less than an hour. Arresting
gardam mumbled the details of charges into a space somewhere near the
microphone. A garda tried to keep the hum of conversation at the back of
the court to a minimum. The cases included a young man arrested for kicking
a door and an 18-year-old arrested for breaking into houses. On St
Valentine's Day, he broke into a house in Collins Avenue and was coming out
with three gold chains from an upstairs bedroom when he was arrested.

Three years ago he had been prosecuted in the Children's Court for firearms
and road traffic offences. The following year the Children's Court
sentenced him to 12 months in St Patrick's for larceny and criminal damage.
He had a drug habit, his solicitor told the court. Judge Connellan
sentenced him on each count to between a month and nine months, to run
consecutively.

Another 18-year-old addict got nine months for stealing a woman's handbag
from the seat of her car. Judge Connellan said he understood the
defendant's drug habit but had to remember his victim, who was "driving
along, minding her own business, when her car door is opened and her
handbag stolen off the seat. I am sure that lady today still has second
thoughts about driving through this town."

Judge Connellan told another young man to take the chance the court was
giving him as he gave him probation for a drink-related row.

A young woman, arrested for stealing #21 worth of clothes from a store,
said she was a lone parent with three children. "I was financially
embarrassed. It was coming towards Easter, and basically I was just
chancing my arm. It was a foolish mistake."

The judge remanded her on bail for a probation report.

About 90 per cent of crimes which come to the attention of the Bridewell
judges are drug-related, according to Judge Smithwick. An expert group,
chaired by Mrs Justice Denham, has recommended that the Government examine
US-style drug courts, which would sentence first-time offenders to
treatment rather than prisons. Such a system could be implemented at
District Court level, Mrs Justice Denham recommended in the report, yet to
be published.

"If a drug courts system were introduced, I would envisage we should have a
separate court system," Judge Smithwick says. "There are very few larcenies
that aren't drug-related."

In Court 45 a pilot system is operating to try to improve the efficiency of
the courts and cut down on the need for dozens of gardam to attend court.
The formal evidence of arrest and charge is given in a certificate handled
by a court-assigned Garda inspector.

A fourth court would ease the pressure on the system, Judge Smithwick says,
and the setting up of an interim courts commission board in the next month
could only be an improvement.

But the Bridewell will continue to mop up the results of problems which
help create criminals. "The earlier some efforts can be made, the more
likely it is you can prevent people ending up in Chancery Street," Judge
Smithwick says. "You don't get a perfectly-behaved child who then suddenly
becomes a criminal at 18."