Small Town Crimes, Big Time Penalties : Courts: Justice tends to be more severe in rural California than in the big cities. It is rare that deals are made with offenders.

Pick a spot, practically any spot, in rural California and chances are you will find, as in this farming community in the San Joaquin Valley, a criminal justice system strikingly different from its urban counterparts.

In Madera, population 29,000 and growing, the police will still respond swiftly to a non-injury traffic accident, search for a stolen tricycle and investigate a $200 bounced check at the J. C. Penney on Yosemite Avenue.

Unlike Los Angeles, rarely do Madera County prosecutors cut deals with criminals in exchange for guilty pleas. More rarely still do Madera County judges grant probation to people ineligible for it.

“This is an extremely conservative community,” observed chief probation officer Eugene L. Gerard. “People here expect that when somebody does the crime, they do the time.”

That philosophy, local authorities say, comes as a shock to some from the big city who venture to Madera and run afoul of the law.

Presiding Superior Court Judge Paul R. Martin likes to tell of the hitchhiker from Los Angeles who was stopped recently by Madera police and found to have a small amount of cocaine in his pocket. Later standing before Martin, the hitchhiker argued that, had he been arrested in Los Angeles, his crime would be have been worth no more than 90 days in the County Jail.

Says Martin proudly: “We sent him to the joint.”

A suspect arrested for a felony is 50% more likely to be prosecuted in Madera County than in Los Angeles County, according to 1989 statistics from the California Department of Justice.

Judges in Madera County also are nearly twice as likely as Los Angeles County judges to send a convicted felon to state prison.

Certainly all is not tranquil in Madera, where a four-bedroom home with a pool still sells for less than $100,000 and where Friday night bingo at the American Legion Hall still packs them in.

Madera has gang graffiti--a suspected import from Fresno, half an hour to the south. Madera has blatant drug-dealing on C Street, a six-square-block area of dingy bars and pool halls on the city’s south side. Last year, Madera also had three murders.

“I see us getting bigger, slipping a little every day,” laments Police Chief Gordon Skeels. “We used to be able to respond to just about anything in less than three minutes. Now, sometimes, people have to wait.”

Skeels said he has considered having his department of 39 officers take reports over the telephone on lesser property crimes rather than respond in person, as the Los Angeles Police Department has done for years. Ultimately, though, he decided against it.

“Sometimes, if you respond and investigate the bike theft,” Skeels said, “you find out that the kid stealing bikes was the one breaking into houses.”

Despite its growth, Madera remains small enough that it usually does not take police long to find out who is committing crime, the chief said. Everyone pretty much knows everyone else--and that not only makes crime more controllable but also ensures that police themselves are more accountable.

“There is not the kind of anonymity that you have in Los Angeles where you put 7,000 cops on the street,” Skeels said. “If one of my guys gets out of line, I hear about it in a hurry.”

The community, the chief and others say, demands that the system work--literally.

For Judge Martin, that translates to a workday beginning at 7:45 a.m., a good 1 1/2 hours before many of his counterparts in Los Angeles are on the bench.

Martin considers adoption motions first thing in the morning. At 8 a.m., he handles probate matters, criminal sentencings, divorces and miscellaneous motions. Trials begin between 9 and 9:30 a.m. At noon, Martin hears juvenile cases, then drives the few blocks to his home for lunch. By 1:15 p.m., he is back on the bench, issuing temporary restraining orders. At 1:30, trials resume.

Except for a stint flying Air Force jets during the Korean War, the rail-thin Martin has lived his whole life in Madera County and can go few places today without being recognized. That is one reason why he eats lunch at home.

“You go to the restaurant here and people ask you ‘Why aren’t you working?’ ” Martin said. “They have a point.”