The numbers light up on the screen in a darkened Annapolis courtroom, and the teen-age audience hushes at the bottom line:

What with lawyer fees, fines, counseling and so on, the cost of walking out of District Court with a year's probation for drunken driving could top $6,000.

That doesn't include automobile damage or medical bills for victims or the emotional trauma of a crash.

"The punishment is very expensive," Richard McLaughlin, a Broadneck High School senior, reflected yesterday near the close of an unusual program aimed at awakening teen-agers to the realities of what could happen if they make bad decisions.

Harold Rohrback Jr., supervisor of the Drinking Driver Monitor Program for the county, said he doesn't like to dwell on the price because cost-benefit is beside the point.

But he wants to ensure he's reaching the 120 students here.

"This is if you are lucky enough to be alive to pay," Rohrback emphasized, as he told them about the financial and other headaches that accompany a conviction.

His words were part of School in the Courts, a program that invites Anne Arundel County high school students into District Court to watch drunken-driving and other cases, then engages them in talks with prosecutors, judges, public defenders and others.

"They actually get to see real cases and real people - what they go through for having made the wrong decision," said Vincent A. Mulieri, the District Court judge who created the program a little more than a year ago and runs a morning session for teens every few months.

He started it after learning about a Michigan judge who held court in schools to give students a look at what happens to the guilty.

Maryland court officials say they know of no identical program in District Court elsewhere in the state, though school classes and other groups occasionally watch sessions in local courts and sometimes meet briefly with a judge.

At yesterday's session, students from North County, Broadneck and Southern high schools saw none of the more serious cases, which would take place in Circuit Court, nor did they see anyone taken away in handcuffs.

Still - and these are kids who have been bombarded with DARE, SADD, MADD and other anti-drug programs - many were startled by the consequences of behaving badly.

In one instance, a woman had to move back in with her parents and wept as the real judge gave her a tongue-lashing and ordered her to spend a weekend in jail for drunken driving.

A 39-year-old man on Day 274 in jail for crack cocaine possession asked to be released a month early to enter a drug program, telling Mulieri that after wasting years in a fog of drugs, his motivation to stay clean is his 3-year-old son.

"Here I see somebody coming in and he has a son and that's his motivation. It's a normal person," said Brianna Collins, a Southern High School ninth-grader, noting that the court session was nothing like television, but quite intimidating.

Teachers said the program hits home because the alcohol and drugs that entice teen-agers are the root of the crimes.