Numbers Belie Toughness on Crime : Governor’s race: We have more prisoners under Wilson but also more victims than in Jerry Brown’s tenure.

To no one’s surprise, much of Friday’s debate between Gov. Pete Wilson and Treasurer Kathleen Brown centered on crime. Since the difference between the gubernatorial candidates’ crime platforms could easily fit through the eye of a needle, it was difficult for either of them to stake out any meaningful territory.

Because Brown has little by way of a record on crime--except for having sold more prison bonds than any state treasurer in the history of America--her opponent quickly steered the conversation to the records of her brother, Jerry, and father, Pat, both former governors.

Jerry Brown’s name in particular sends shivers down the spines of his sister’s campaign staff when it comes to the crime issue. Wilson’s political consultants clearly feel that allusions to Jerry Brown need no explanation to crime-weary voters: Brown equals more crime.

But, as is often the case in political campaigns, facts as they relate to crime rates, incarceration rates and gubernatorial toughness do not match the mythology.

For example, while it is true that the incarceration rate fell by 19% in 1975, the second year of Jerry Brown’s Administration, the crime rate nonetheless also dropped during the next two years.

The only other governor under whom incarceration declined during the past three decades was Ronald Reagan. Believing that the prison system was costly and ineffective, Reagan told his parole board to substantially reduce the prison population, much in the same way he cleared out the state’s psychiatric hospitals. When the parole board was finished, the prison population had dropped by a whopping 30% over a three-year period. Today, that would be the equivalent of releasing 38,000 inmates.

During their respective eight years as governor, the incarceration rate fell by 19% under Reagan; it increased by 19% under Brown and 132% under George Deukmejian. The violent-crime rate when Reagan left office was 602 per 100,000. At the end of Brown’s term, it was 821 per 100,000, and by the end of Deukmejian’s term, it was up again to 1,055 per 100,000.

Although the incarceration rate has risen 25% under Pete Wilson, violent crime also has increased in the first three years of his Administration.

With a violent crime rate of 1,059 per 100,000, California has achieved the dubious distinction of having both the highest rate of violent crime and the highest incarceration rate in the world.

The rate at which Californians are victims of violent crime under Wilson represents a 29% increase over the rate at which they were victims under Jerry Brown. If, for example, Californians during Wilson’s Administration had been murdered at the rate they were when Brown was governor, 508 fewer of them would have lost their lives last year and 97,469 fewer of them would have fallen victim to violent crime overall. This despite the fact that we have nearly four times as many people in California prisons today as we did when Jerry Brown left office.

It has been said, “If all I had was a hammer, all my problems would look like nails.” Unfortunately, the “nails” of unemployment, inadequate education and inequality of opportunity do not respond particularly well to the “hammer” of incarceration. That’s why governors of liberal and conservative stripes alike have found prisons to be a woefully ineffective means by which to control crime.

Perhaps Californians should evaluate their governors not by how many citizens they incarcerate, but by how few victims are left in their wake.