Kathleen Brown Outlines 33-Point Anti-Crime Plan : Politics: Gubernatorial candidate would crack down on first-time offenders. Foes point to death penalty stance.

Democratic gubernatorial candidate Kathleen Brown on Monday proposed a 33-point program to break the cycle of crime and violence in California by cracking down early on first-time lawbreakers, getting tougher on youthful drug-users and graffiti taggers, and even keeping teen-agers home at night under an old-fashioned curfew.

Detailing her ideas on what is emerging as the key issue of the 1994 campaign, Brown, who has been state treasurer for three years, directly challenged the record of Republican Pete Wilson by saying his term as governor “has been marked by passivity, by timidity and by indecision.” Her program, she argued, was both tough and smart.

Speaking before a gathering of law enforcement officials in Burbank, Brown matched Wilson point for point on major pending crime issues in California by endorsing a proposed life prison term for three-time felons, by severely restricting time off of prison terms for good behavior, by treating violent teen-age criminals as adult offenders, and eliminating prisoner visits with spouses, often referred to as “conjugal” visits.

She went further in a variety of proposals including a total ban on assault weapons and restrictions on carrying other weapons, endorsement of President Clinton’s plan to put more police on the street, and getting tough on graffiti taggers.

Spokesmen for Wilson and Insurance Commissioner John Garamendi, a likely Democratic opponent of Brown in the primary, afterward generally disregarded Brown’s proposals and instead criticized her personal opposition to the death penalty. Wilson and Garamendi favor capital punishment as do more than 75% of California voters.

Wilson has been seeking to draw attention to the issue of crime and violence for several months and it has been brought to a frenzied pitch recently after the kidnaping death of 12-year-old Polly Klaas of Petaluma.

At a breakfast with political reporters early Monday, Wilson said Brown lacked credibility on the crime issue “because I don’t think she brings any experience at all to it.”

Wilson also sought to focus the discussion on Brown’s position on the death penalty. He said Brown could not possibly enforce the death penalty as governor as strongly as he could.

Brown, in comments to reporters after delivering her address on crime, said: “I would ask him: ‘Does he think California is a safer place today than it was three years ago?’ ”

Brown said she would enforce California’s death penalty law just as effectively as Wilson. When condemned convicts came up for a governor’s clemency review, Brown added: “I would use the same standards that every governor has used in reviewing the cases.”

“There is no difference between Kathleen Brown and Pete Wilson (on this). . . . The key and important thing is that I have pledged to enforce the death penalty.”

Although Garamendi has not yet begun an active campaign, his strategists also have called attention to Brown’s position on capital punishment as her potential “Achilles’ heel.”

Garamendi was not available for comment Monday, but his campaign manager, Darry Sragow, said of her crime address: “This is Kathleen Brown’s latest in a series of efforts to prove to increasingly doubtful insiders that she has a grip on the key issues of concern to voters.

“After all is said and done, she remains opposed to the death penalty and would prefer to have us believe that her opposition to the death penalty doesn’t matter.”

Brown’s speech was the third in a series on major issues expected to dominate the 1994 campaign for governor. The first two were on illegal immigration and education. Brown will speak on the California economy sometime in January.

In her remarks, she emphasized intervention in the crime cycle with younger offenders before they can become career violent criminals.

Brown quoted RAND statistics that the average age of arrest in California is 17, but the average age of being sent to prison is 26.

“In other words, young offenders are allowed an average of nine years of criminal activity before they are really punished for the first time,” she said.

“By the time the system begins to hold them accountable for their actions, they’re well past the point of no return in their careers,” Brown added in her speech to a luncheon meeting of the California Organization of Police and Sheriffs (COPS) at the Burbank Holiday Inn.

Breaking the cycle starts with “an effective, meaningful war on drugs and alcohol,” she said.

Brown categorized her 33 points into six key elements:

* Programs to prevent people, particularly juveniles, from committing their first crimes. This would include more state aid for the DARE anti-drug program and for after-school programs.

* Punishment for first offenses, particularly for drug crimes, as a means of preventing youths from turning to more serious crime. She proposed a guaranteed minimum term of 90 days for all first-time drug offenders.

* Overhaul gun control laws to prevent violent crimes. All assault weapons would be banned. The illegal possession or carrying of a loaded firearm would be a felony rather than a misdemeanor.

* Increase the number of police on the streets, primarily through support for Clinton’s anti-crime program.

* Require in-prison treatment of all prisoners convicted of crimes involving drugs or alcohol.

* Prevent violent crimes by locking away repeat offenders for longer prison terms. Brown endorsed the proposed “Three Strikes and You’re Out” initiative that would give life terms to three-time felons.

Although it would be up to individual municipalities to impose curfews, Brown said: “I want to reintroduce the old-fashioned idea that kids shouldn’t be out at all hours of the night.”

She said cities should look at a program in Norwalk, where youngsters 17 and under can be cited and fined as much as $675 for being on the streets after 10 p.m. Gang-related crime has dropped more than one-third since Norwalk started the curfew, she said.

In addition to drugs and alcohol, graffiti “is often the first step on the road to gang violence,” Brown said, proposing that graffiti generated by criminal street gangs be an automatic felony.

Brown supports legislation to require that felons serve at least 85% of the time to which they are sentenced. Wilson also supports that legislation. Under present law, sentences can be cut as much as half for time served.

And juveniles who commit violent crimes such as murder should be tried and punished as adults, she said.

Brown discussed the death penalty issue directly in the final paragraphs of her prepared speech, declaring that her opponents would reduce a complex crime program “to a few slogans and litmus tests.”

“Even though the plan I unveiled today contains 33 proposals, all of them aimed directly at the problem of violence, the governor will try to focus your attention on one issue: the death penalty.”

In fact, the Wilson reelection campaign’s communications director, Dan Schnur, came to the banquet room after the address to claim that it was “naive and cynical” for Brown to argue that she could enforce the death penalty as effectively as Wilson.

Wilson argued that a governor has unfettered discretion in a clemency proceeding to decide whether a condemned person should die in the gas chamber. In his first term, Wilson has denied clemency to two convicts who died at San Quentin--the first executions in California since 1967.

The first query to Brown from reporters after the speech was her view on the death penalty.

“I will enforce the law,” she responded.

Why is she opposed to capital punishment? another reporter asked.

“That is irrelevant,” the treasurer said. “The issue that the voters care about is will a governor enforce the death penalty, and I have stated quite clearly my intent to enforce the law and enforce the death penalty.”