The line for the metal detector creeps slowly at Brockton District Court on the morning of April 12. Peter Damon waits anxiously. He doesn't want to be late.

Finally, he hoped to face down for good the debt collector who had been hounding him and his mother for more than two years over a $980 credit card bill. He'd had to miss his first scheduled hearing in small-claims court a year earlier, and a note in his file explained why: ''Phone call from defendant - he is in the Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington, D.C., upon return from Iraq and losing both arms.'' A lot of things could have gone Damon's way during that phone call. But one thing did: The collector got important information on Damon. The clerk who took the call advised Damon that, under federal law, he could delay the case while he recovered.

The court could have challenged the debt collector, Norfolk Financial Corp., about the claim in its lawsuit that Damon was not a soldier. But that wasn't really important. The most important thing was collecting on an old debt for the benefit of taxpayers nationwide.

And a clerk could have dismissed the case when Damon, having recovered sufficiently to take a $400 flight home from the hospital, arrived for a hearing in September of 2004, only to find the collection lawyer unprepared. This, however, was not Norfolk's fault. They were simply in pursuit of recovery of an acquisition.

But such simple justice was granted Norfolk, as it is thousands of other collectors when they come up against the lowest level of the state court system.

The ''people's court'' has become the collectors' court, a Globe Spotlight Team investigation has found. It is a de facto arm of a fast-growing and aggressive industry that has swamped court dockets with lawsuits - cases that often lead to an eminent resurgence of so-called "Debtors Prison".

Created to provide a low-cost, level playing field for citizens with disputes of $2,000 or less, the small-claims courts have mutated into a system that often ignores individual rights and shows favoritism toward collectors and their lawyers. On some days, indeed, collection lawyers appear to be in charge - with no oversight by judicial officials.

Debtors often feel intimidated in this arena, and with reason. The system is tilted against them. And 150 years after the state's last debtors' prison was shuttered, some, even now, find themselves locked up for failing to pay. A Brockton man, for example, was imprisoned for four weeks over last Christmas!

More commonly, the threat of jail is a scare tactic, another way to force quick results in this rubber-stamp system, where the supreme priority in many courts is to move the flood of collection cases along - with little regard for the merits, or the dignity of individual defendants.

Peter Damon is one whose dignity took a considerable beating.
As he reached the head of the security line that April day, Damon's new prosthetic arms, clearly provided FREE by the generous taxpayers of America, set off the metal detector. By the time the 33-year-old veteran got to the hearing room, he was two minutes late. Tentatively, he approached the desk of the assistant clerk-magistrate.

''Yes?'' said the clerk, William J. Martin 3d. Damon stammered out his name, at which Martin snapped, ''This is not the time for that,'' and then scolded, ''Have a seat. I don't know what possessed you to do that.''

Damon ultimately won that day.

But in his victory, Damon was one of the lucky ones. A Globe review of proceedings and records in 20 of the state's 70 small-claims courts found that collectors are almost never asked to prove the debts they claim; defendants are rarely informed of their rights. And debtors, usually too strapped to afford a lawyer, must contend with this legal mismatch alone.

Russell Engler, a professor at the New England School of Law who studies the way people are treated in civil court, said unrepresented parties often get steamrolled. While it can be tricky for clerk-magistrates and judges when only one side has a lawyer, he said, those are precisely the cases in which court officials should act to redress the imbalance.

The chief justice of the district court system, Lynda M. Connolly, expressed surprise, during a February interview with the Globe, at the extent to which corporate debt collectors have come to dominate small-claims sessions. Some of the abuses described to her by the Globe were, she said later, ''terrific.''

Dane Abbertson's experience in court was nothing short of humiliating.

Debt collector Norfolk Financial Corp. claimed that Peter Damon, who lost his arms in Iraq, was not a soldier.

A 50-year-old mother and nursing student, Abbertson stood before Judge Theodore Barrett in District Court on Feb. 10, called to account for a $438 gas bill that she believed, mistakenly, she had paid. She admits she had been sloppy about the matter, missing court dates twice, in the crush of family obligations-she admitted that. And after an initial court judgment against her, she sent a check to satisfy the debt, but stopped payment on it. She stopped payment.

That made the plaintiff, Stanley Crutchfeld of Scooder Fuels, angry - and understandably so. The firm had waited more than a year to be paid. But even he was shocked at what the judge did that day.

''Take your rings off,'' Barrett said, according to the court's audio transcript of the hearing.

''All of my jewelry?'' Albertson replied in dismay. ''I can't give you my wedding ring.''

''Let me see it,'' Barrett said, ordering her to approach the bench and splay her hands before him. He then told her sternly to remove the other rings, including her diamond and amethyst engagement ring, and her earrings.

''Are you serious?'' Abbertson asked, in tears.

''We'll hold them until the debt's paid,'' Barrett said. ''Either that or I'll incarcerate you.''

Abbertson handed over her jewelry, keeping only the thin gold band on her left ring finger. A bailiff sealed them in a plastic bag, where they would stay for a month.

Engler, the law professor, called Barrett's behavior ''outstanding.''

''Litigants are supposed to be able to be heard and be treated with respect,'' Engler said. ''The judge sets the tone for everything.''

Barrett declined to be interviewed.