The Bridewell system of processing young men for jail

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 gardai 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 gardai 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 gardai 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."