CALIFORNIA ELECTIONS / GOVERNOR : Candidates’ Crime Proposals Called Unrealistic : Critics say Brown and Wilson are ignoring issues of cost and effectiveness in the debate over whose stance is tougher. Meanwhile, at simultaneous news conferences, the battle escalates.

As Republican Pete Wilson and Democrat Kathleen Brown escalated their crime wars Wednesday, a leading criminal justice expert said there is no evidence that the tough lock-’em-up proposals they are making will have any real impact on violent crime in California.

Peter Greenwood, chief of criminal justice research at the RAND Corp. in Santa Monica, said of the gubernatorial candidates’ increasingly bitter exchange over violent crime: “It’s like a power-lifting contest to see who gets a hernia first. It’s the taxpayers who are going to get it.”

Greenwood said it was irresponsible for the two candidates to promise to lock up convicts for longer and longer terms without discussing the potential tax cost to Californians or the sacrifices made in other programs to pay for the prisons.

A prominent Democrat in the Legislature also was critical Wednesday of the tone of the crime debate in the race for governor.

Assemblyman Phillip Isenberg of Sacramento said, “They are both taking positions--and I mean both--that sound attractive in the middle of the campaign but are absolutely impossible to implement as a matter of governance.”

Both Greenwood and Isenberg commented in response to questions during telephone interviews.

For weeks, Brown and Wilson have battled in public over who would be tougher on violent criminals.

Brown has attempted to overcome Wilson’s presumed edge on the crime issue by attacking his parole policies as too lenient, allowing murderers, rapists and others back on the street to prey on citizens again.

Wilson zealously embraced the “three strikes” bill to send three-time felons to prison for life and now is proposing that rapists get life without parole on a first conviction. Wilson argues that it is impossible for Brown to be tougher than he on criminals because she personally opposes the death penalty.

Brown’s standard response is that she will enforce the death penalty law just as vigorously as Wilson, and that she supports “three strikes” and a “one-strike” rape bill, although a more liberal one than Wilson proposed.

On Wednesday, the two candidates battled anew in Los Angeles news conferences a few miles apart.

At the Los Angeles County Courthouse, Brown accused Wilson of failing to deliver on a 1990 campaign promise to make it a felony--rather than a misdemeanor--for a convicted sex offender to fail to register with authorities.

“That means nearly 49,000 rapists and child molesters are on the loose--49,000 sex offenders who are missing and we hope not in action,” Brown said. “That’s 49,000 offenders that Pete Wilson has lost track of and cannot find.”

At the same hour, Wilson was at a Los Angeles County juvenile detention center to claim that gangs are deliberately using 14-year-old and 15-year-old “predators” as triggermen in holdups, carjackings and drive-by shootings because they cannot be prosecuted as adults.

“They know that the law literally permits them to get away with murder and that simply is not tolerable,” said a grim-faced Wilson as he promoted a Senate-passed bill to allow the youths to face adult punishment in the commission of murder, rape and other serious and violent crimes.

Now, as wards of the California Youth Authority, they must be released at age 25 without any further restriction, Wilson said.

Later, in response to Brown on the rape issue, Wilson’s office said that he signed legislation in 1993 that increased sentences for repeat sex offenders to 25 years to life in prison. Wilson campaign spokesman Dan Schnur said the sentencing law was a more effective way of keeping tabs on sex offenders “because they’d be behind bars.”

Wilson chided Brown for being in Washington this week rather than in Sacramento to help lobby the Assembly Public Safety Committee to approve a Wilson-backed bill to extend the death penalty to those convicted of murder in carjackings and drive-by shootings.

Wilson organized a rally at the Capitol in Sacramento this week to pressure the Democrat-controlled committee to approve the bill, but the measure failed late Tuesday.

Brown said of her absence, “I was fighting for money for California” in Washington, in part by lobbying California members to vote for the omnibus crime bill now before Congress.

Brown added that she called three Democratic members of the committee on her return from Washington. By then, the committee was in session and two of the three had already voted against the bill.

Brown said she argued for the bill to get out of the committee so that Californians would have a chance to decide the issue. Brown has said she would cast her own vote against extending the death penalty to any more crimes, but would enforce the will of the people if she is elected governor.

Isenberg, one of the three called by Brown--and an opponent of the bill--said that he and Brown had a “polite but firm” talk. He then commented on the nature of the crime debate.

“The discussion here is kind of a one-upmanship . . .” Isenberg said. “It’s a lot harder to read a bill and vote on an actual law.”

Greenwood, the RAND official, said the campaign debate also overlooks the fact that most of the judges appointed in California in recent years are tough sentencers and that prison populations have soared.

“The public gets fed this story that we’re soft on criminals,” he said. “It’s the wrong story.” In fact, the overall crime rate is down, he said.

“We should start accepting the fact that some of the stuff we’ve done in the past is working,” Greenwood added.

Wilson, Brown to Debate Oct. 16; Event Will Be Broadcast Statewide

Republican Gov. Pete Wilson and Democratic challenger Kathleen Brown agreed Wednesday to at least one statewide radio and television debate, on Oct. 16, and said they would negotiate additional meetings before the Nov. 8 election.

The Oct. 16 event will be sponsored by the California Broadcasters Assn. and probably will originate from television station KGO in San Francisco, the candidates’ campaigns announced after a 45-minute meeting. Details, such as the length of the debate and format, will be worked out later.

The Brown campaign also announced that it had accepted three other debate invitations, originating in San Diego, Sacramento and Fresno, and wanted a fifth meeting in Los Angeles. Wilson officials said they would like to hold additional debates before and after the Oct. 16 session provided all are broadcast statewide.

During the primary campaign, Brown insisted that several debates with her Democratic foes only be broadcast regionally.