Vice President George Bush, seeking to exploit Americans' crime fears as a campaign weapon, is turning prison inmate Willie Horton Jr. into a symbol of what he calls opponent Michael Dukakis' liberal views. It was Horton who, while on furlough from the Massachusetts prison where he was serving time for murder, brutally slashed a Maryland man and twice raped his fiancee last year. He is now behind bars in Maryland. Because Dukakis, as Massachusetts governor, was in charge of the prison system at the time, Bush sees the Horton incident as a political mother lode. While polls place crime somewhere in the middle of voters' concerns, it is closely linked to the drug issue, which rides atop the worry list. National crime statistics released this weekend show crime up 1.8 percent last year, ending a five-year decline. And 34.7 million people were victimized by criminals _ nearly one in three American households. ``It has tremendous saliency,'' said GOP political consultant Eddie Mahe. ``It ties into the drug issue so closely. Everybody knows the drug problem is driving the crime problem through the roof.'' Bush had made crime _ and Horton in particular _ the basis for anti-Dukakis campaign speeches and a television spot highlighting the crime issue, and he has recruited Horton's victim _ Cliff Barnes, who was cut 22 times in the stomach _ as a campaign surrogate. Deputy Bush press secretary Mark Goodin even keeps a photo of Horton on the wall in his office. ``I didn't ask to be brought into this,'' Barnes said Monday at a news conference in Texas. ``I didn't invite Willie Horton to my House and I didn't let him out of prison.'' The attack has been going on for weeks, and Dukakis was at first slow to respond. But now the Democratic campaign is fighting back and hoping the emotionalism of Bush's message will backfire by Election Day. Over the weekend, Dukakis called Bush ``shameless'' for using crime victims to win votes. ``Unlike Mr. Bush, I've been a chief executive on the front lines of fighting crime. Unlike Mr. Bush, who will not take responsibility for anything, I as chief executive took full responsibility for that tragic Horton case and acted to change that policy,'' Dukakis said, referring to his signing of a state law in April revoking furloughs for first-degree murderers. Dukakis also has put together a television spot that seeks to shove the issue back at Bush. The ad cites a 1981 rape and murder carried out by an inmate staying at a Houston halfway house that Bush helped start while he was a congressman. Dukakis says two similar murders occurred under the California furlough system in the early 1970s, at a time when Ronald Reagan, then state governor, supported furloughs. Dukakis also points to a 13 percent drop in violent crime in Massachusetts since 1982, the largest decline among major industrial states. He says that as the state's chief executive, he had to face real problems of running the Massachusetts prison system, while Bush has never been tested on the issue. Far from being out of the mainstream, the Massachusetts law allowing prison furloughs is in line with the rest of the nation. A 1987 national survey found that all 50 states, the District of Columbia and the federal prison system have some provision for granting short-term furloughs for prisoners, and two-thirds of them permit furloughs for prisoners serving life terms. Bush's use of the issue is ``an oversimplification of a real complex thing,'' said Emily Herrick, an editor with Contact Inc., the non-profit criminal justice information organization that conducted the survey. More than 200,000 furloughs were granted last year for 53,000 inmates, the survey found. No murders were reported. All but three states _ Hawaii, Oregon and North Carolina _ had success rates in excess of 90 percent, meaning the inmates returned at the appointed time and place without violating terms of the furlough. Bush hit the crime issue again Monday, renewing his proposals to create an anti-gang unit in the Justice Department, spend more money to build prisons and bolster programs to compensate crime victims. ``I think there is something very wrong when there is so much sympathy for criminals and very little left over for victims,'' Bush told a campaign crowd in Trenton, N.J. ``Frankly, law-abiding Americans are fed up with the cruel and unusual punishment inflicted on them by those who are soft on crime.'' Despite his rhetoric, Bush has been short on specifics. Asked what he would do about the furlough issue, the vice president has said only that as president he would have his attorney general review the federal prison system's policies. ``I don't have any specific feelings at all,'' he said, although he said he wants to make sure the federal system doesn't ``slip into the Massachusetts model.''
