A JUDGE has criticised York youth justices for "bringing the system into disrepute" by their leniency towards a burglar.

York Crown Court heard that the 16-year-old raider searched a 76-year-old woman's bedroom drawers while she was asleep and was caught red-handed nearby with jewellery.

When Judge David Bentley QC heard that York Youth Court had given the boy a conditional discharge he spoke out.

"This kind of sentence brings the system into disrepute," he said and he warned the boy's accomplice Simon Adam Barker, 18, that he could be jailed for his part in the raid.

"The view of the magistrates, that the way of dealing with a youth who breaks in at night, who rummages through the drawers of a 76-year-old who was asleep in bed, is a conditional discharge, is not a view I for one share, and it is not a view that most of us share."

A conditional discharge means that the youth will only be punished if he commits another offence in the near future.

The judge was speaking after a jury at York Crown Court convicted Barker, of St Stephen's Square, Acomb, of burglary after a three-day trial. Barker had denied the charge, claiming he was in a club at the time of the midnight raid.

But PC Colin Sutherland saw him with the boy near the flat and identified him later to detectives. The policeman also caught the boy.

Barker's case was adjourned for a pre-sentence report and he was released on bail.

Updated: 13:11 Saturday, January 18, 2003