The typical defendant at Dublin's Bridewell Courts is a 24-yearold male, from a deprived area, and charged with a property crime, according to a new study. Dublin District Court has been reduced to a clearing house for the "processing of young males from deprived areas", it argues.
More than 70 per cent of defendants who appear before the courts are from Dublin's most deprived districts, the study published in the Irish Criminal Law Journal found. And those defendants are 49 per cent more likely to be sentenced by the courts to prison than their counterparts from less deprived areas.
The study also revealed that a slightly higher percentage of road traffic offenders were jailed than drug offenders: 19.6 per cent of people charged with road traffic offences received a custodial sentence, compared to 19.2 per cent of drug offenders.
The study, Crime and Poverty in Dublin, headed up by Reid Professor of Criminal Law, Prof Ivana Bacik, and Dr Michael O'Connell, TCD lecturer in psychology, analysed 2,000 sample court records from the three Dublin District (Bridewell) courts between 1988 and 1994. "The results indicate that residing in an economically deprived area is a strong risk factor for District Court appearance."
Just over 10 per cent of defendants were female, despite the fact that women made up 53.8 per cent of the population in the area covered by the courts. The average age of all defendants was 24, with an average age of 23 for men and 28 for women.
More than 55 per cent of crimes were offences against property, 11.4 per cent related to assault, 10 per cent were criminal justice offences (breach of bail or barring orders), 10.9 per cent were public order offences, 8.5 per cent were road traffic offences and only 3.9 per cent were drug-related offences.
Property offenders were also the most common ones to be given a prison sentence. A third of property offenders were given a custodial sentence, compared to 21.5 per cent of those charged with assault, 32.6 per cent charged with criminal justice offences and 6.7 per cent charged with public order offences.
District Court judges can impose a sentence of up to a year for each offence, or a fine of up to £1,500, or refer the case to a higher court.
The report concludes: "73.3 per cent of District Court defendants are from the most economically deprived areas. One might be forgiven for suggesting, on the basis of the data, that the Dublin District Court system appears to be there for [their italics] people from deprived areas."
