Clinton Ideas on Crime Bill May Cut Both Ways

President Clinton will seek changes in final crime legislation that threaten programs prized by both liberals and conservatives, according to a detailed internal review of the Administration’s position provided to The Times.

In a move that is likely to disappoint liberals, the Administration wants to remove a provision to retroactively reduce minimum sentences for first-time nonviolent drug offenders, according to the 61-page document. At the same time, the review document shows that the Administration opposes some top conservative priorities--most prominently a Senate-passed measure to establish a network of new regional federal prisons.

Overall, the document generally favors the House version of the legislation, which puts more emphasis on prevention and softens some of the harshest new penalties included in the Senate bill.

In the memo, the Administration urges Congress to set aside $28 billion over the next six years for the bill--significantly more than the $22.3 billion that was included in the five-year Senate bill passed last fall. Sources said that Senate-House conferees already have “largely agreed” to spend at least that much--though some House members want to bump up the figure to $30 billion.

The conferees are likely to divide the funds roughly evenly among funding the President’s promise to hire 100,000 new police officers, building prisons and launching an array of crime prevention programs, officials involved in preliminary negotiations said.

In a measure of potentially significant interest to California, the Administration document supports federal reimbursement to states for the cost of incarcerating illegal immigrants--though it does not specify the cost.

The memo also expresses support for provisions in the bills expediting the deportation of illegal immigrants serving time in U.S. prisons and calls for expanding the use of federal anti-racketeering laws against smugglers who bring in illegal immigrants. It also endorses “an expansion of seizure-and-forfeiture authority in order to seize the vehicles or vessels used to smuggle aliens.”

The Administration distributed the analysis to key legislators as House-Senate conferees prepare to sit down today for their first attempt to reconcile the differences between the two chambers’ versions of the bill. One House aide said that the document--which mostly reaffirms positions Clinton has already taken--is arriving relatively late in the process but still is likely to exert significant influence on the conference discussions.

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“The train is pretty far gone, but a lot of their views are going to be taken into account,” the aide said.

Democratic leaders are hoping to wrap up the talks by the end of next week and possibly pass the legislation by the time Congress leaves Washington for its July 4 recess. But participants said that, while preliminary staff talks have resolved many issues, differences remain substantial on several of the most controversial questions.

High on that list is House-passed legislation to restrict use of the death penalty in jurisdictions where it has been applied more frequently to minorities than to whites. The Administration has avoided taking a firm public position on that polarizing issue throughout the long struggle over the crime legislation, and its position remains fuzzy in the document.

In an accompanying letter to Sen. Joseph R. Biden Jr. (D-Del.), the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, the Administration said only that it will work with the conference “on provisions that would prevent discrimination while allowing effective use of capital punishment in appropriate cases.”

The letter offers no further details, but, previously, senior officials have spoken privately about restricting so-called “racial justice” provisions--which would allow those convicted of capital crimes to challenge the death penalty on the basis of racial bias--to the handful of federal capital punishment cases. That would reduce the measure essentially to symbolism.

The Administration may face another struggle over its position on a House-passed provision to exempt from mandatory minimum sentences those first-time nonviolent drug offenders who have no previous record of serious wrongdoing. With bipartisan support, the House proposed to make the change retroactive and apply it to current prisoners with records of good behavior. The Administration said that it will oppose retroactive application.

Generally, though, the document favors the House version of the legislation where the two chambers conflict. The Administration backs the narrower House version of the “three strikes” provision, which imposes life imprisonment on repeat violent felons, over Senate language that would apply the penalty to a larger group of offenses. It supports the full array of new prevention programs that House liberals added to the bill. And it prefers a House provision that permits judges to try teen-agers accused of violent crimes as adults to a Senate proposal that would require such trials.

In the memo, the Administration reiterates its opposition to the Senate-passed proposal to create a new network of federal regional prisons. It instead backs the House plan to provide states with grants to build and operate their own prisons. The memo supports the House provision to allocate some of that money to states that pass tougher sentencing laws.

One reason the crime bill conference has been delayed is that Rep. Jack Brooks (D-Tex.), the House Judiciary Committee chairman and an opponent of a ban on assault weapons, has sought to separate the ban on some assault weapons included in the Senate measure from the overall legislation. That would make it easier for opponents to kill the assault ban.

But the document reaffirms Clinton’s support for the ban and one White House official said flatly Wednesday: “The assault ban will be in the final bill.”