Her plan also would revive several programs started by her husband's administration, including federal funding of community-oriented prosecutors and police officers.
The New York senator outlined her proposal in a speech Friday in Philadelphia, a key city in her contest with Sen. Barack Obama for voters in Pennsylvania's April 22 presidential primary.
At a second Philadelphia event, Clinton chastised Obama for reportedly telling a San Francisco audience that some Pennsylvanians are bitter because of their economic frustrations.
"Well, that's not my experience," she told a Drexel University crowd, describing the state's residents as resilient, optimistic and hardworking.
"Pennsylvanians don't need a president who looks down on them," she said. "They need a president who stands up for them."
The Web site Huffington Post reported that Obama, speaking of some Pennsylvanians' economic anxieties, told supporters at a San Francisco fundraiser Sunday: "You go into these small towns in Pennsylvania and, like a lot of small towns in the Midwest, the jobs have been gone now for 25 years. ... And it's not surprising then they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations."
In a written response to what it called "campaign attacks" by Clinton and Republican candidate John McCain, the Obama campaign made no direct reference to the San Francisco remarks. A McCain adviser accused Obama of "elitism and condescension."
Following the rivals' criticism, Obama revisited the subject while speaking Friday night at a high school in Terre Haute, Ind. "People don't vote on economic issues because they don't expect anybody is going to help them," he said. "So people end up voting on issues like guns and are they going to have the right to bear arms. They vote on issues like gay marriage. They take refuge in their faith and their community, and their family, and the things they can count on. But they don't believe they can count on Washington."
Clinton, in describing her anti-crime plan, said she hopes to reduce homicide rates and the amount of prison space occupied by nonviolent offenders, many of them drug users.
The issue of crime has played a comparatively small role in this year's presidential race, which is dominated by the economy and Iraq war. In introducing Clinton, however, Philadelphia Mayor Michael Nutter said many of his constituents "are more worried about Al Gangster than al-Qaida." Philadelphia had 392 murders last year.
Clinton's position on minimum sentencing has drawn little notice, although she backs a Senate bill that would eliminate the five-year mandatory prison term for persons prosecuted in federal courts for possessing at least five grams of crack cocaine. The bill, and her initiative, would not affect state prosecutions.
