PUSHING PARENTS TO PAY : COURT IN JAIL FACILITY SERVES AS REMINDER TO DELINQUENT PAYERS OF CHILD ?7 SUPPORT.

Byline: Janet Gilmore Daily News Staff Writer

It's 8 a.m. on a weekday morning and a commissioner in one of Los Angeles' newest courts gears up to hear perhaps 50 to 80 cases, all involving only one brand of defendant - parents accused of failing to pay child support.

Prosecuting deadbeat parents is nothing new. But it's a new concept to bring the cases to a central courtroom set aside solely for these cases. And the courtroom, set up in a gloomy wing of the downtown jail, is having an impact, prosecutors and defendants agreed.

``When you first come down here, you're looking at the county jail when you park,'' said one defendant, who requested anonymity.

``It's a whole psychological thing. . . . like they're trying to humiliate and depress you so you'll be willing to do and say just about anything to get out of here, to get in your car and go home.''

Roughly 30 new criminal cases are filed each day, all of them sent to Division 82 in Los Angeles - an aging wing of a complex dominated by the county jail.

``When they get here they realize `Now I got caught,' '' said Ed Mizrahi, a head deputy district attorney.

Prosecutors say that filing criminal charges gets the attention of the most unreachable deadbeat parents:

Those who have not responded to payment orders from civil court judges, who have hidden assets by setting up phony financial accounts, or who have chosen to hide, gone underground.

The defendants, virtually all men, face a maximum sentence of a year in jail and/or a $2,000 fine.

Most agree to a diversion program, a kind of informal probation in which they agree to pay a certain amount of money each month for the next few years to keep a misdemeanor conviction off their record.

But some accused are so bitter with the child's parent, so angry they were hauled into a criminal court proceeding, they vow to hire the best attorney and fight the matter out before a jury.

Those cases are sent out to other courthouses but only 1 percent or 2 percent of the cases before Municipal Court Commissioner Joseph Biderman end up at trial, Mizrahi said. And the longer a defendant waits to make a deal, the more costly it can become.

In one such case the man agreed to pay $50,000 in arrears at a rate of $500 a month, plus $1,500 a month in current child support for the two kids.

``This is going to help this family out a lot if he lives up to it, and if he doesn't . . . the bullet - 180 days in jail,'' Mizrahi said, plucking the written agreement.

Exactly how much time the defendants spend in jail, however, is not clear. With the facilities so crowded, some are serving 18 days on a 90-day sentence, said Deputy Public Defender Jim Racusin.

But Mizrahi reminds, ``The purpose of the statute and the law is to get the children their child support. When all else fails they'll throw 'em in jail.''

Faced with the grim alternatives, many will plead no contest to the misdemeanor charge of willful ``failure to provide'' food, clothing, shelter and other basic support with out a legal excuse.

They then sign a payment schedule agreement to avoid being thrown in jail.

Prosecutors say roughly 50 percent pay up; 20 percent skip town; the remainder make partial payments, are ordered to community service work or jail time.

Racusin credits the single courtroom system as more efficient and equitable than the old process of sending these cases out to various municipal courts where child support cases are thrown in with other matters.

But he also sees problems.

The mothers who have sought prosecutions are not always honest about how much money the father has paid, he said, noting that many fathers prefer to give money directly to the children so they can monitor how it is spent and still feel connected to the family.

In the criminal court process the money goes through a trustee's service under contract with the county.

``Fathers want to be fathers,'' Racusin said. ``They want to coach the team. They want to have a relationship with the child, and this idea of boiling it down to money dehumanizes the whole process.''

In fact on one court day a defendant, seated in the audience, mumbles to another man that he stopped paying support when the mother moved out of state, effectively preventing him from seeing his kids.

A few rows back one woman, seated alone and meeting with a prosecutor for the first time, explains quietly that the father had bought food while he lived at home with her and the child. But he has left and so has the support money.

The following day a different woman stands before the court commissioner and explains that she no longer wants to pursue civil or criminal child support action against the father.

The couple chatted before and after the court proceeding, prosecutor Mizrahi noticed. They are probably on good terms, but some men merely pay for a few months, then stop, and it takes six months to again prepare the case for court, he said.