(NewsNation) — Vice President Kamala Harris‘ endorsement by President Joe Biden as his pick after bowing out from the presidential race has put her mixed record on crime back into the spotlight.
In recent years, Harris has portrayed herself as a criminal justice reformer, but her history has not always been consistent.
She proclaimed herself as California’s “top cop” in 2016 as the state’s attorney general and was a “polarizing figure” due to some of her stances on major criminal cases and policies, reported the Sacramento Bee.
But she’s also spearheaded several progressive initiatives during her tenure that have been considered ahead of its time in criminal justice reforms.
Harris’ history in office
Harris became the San Francisco district attorney in 2004 and served two terms until 2010.
She became California’s attorney general in 2011 and held the spot until 2017. She became the first woman and person of color to hold both of those offices.
In 2016, Harris was elected as a U.S. senator for California. Four years later in 2020, she launched an unsuccessful bid for the presidency but was later tapped by Biden as a running mate.
Harris shifts back and forth on crime
Harris entered the criminal justice arena during a “tough on crime” time, and in many ways, she stayed in line with this view.
During her time as a prosecutor, Harris’ office argued against a man who was proven innocent because her office claimed he filed his petition for release past the legal deadline, reported Vox.
She also supported an anti-truancy program that targeted parents of kids who skipped school and threatened them with prosecution and punishment, the outlet reported.
“Time after time, when progressives urged her to embrace criminal justice reforms as a district attorney and then the state’s attorney general, Ms. Harris opposed them or stayed silent,” Lara Bazelon, a law professor and former director for the Loyola Law School Project for the Innocent in Los Angeles, wrote in a 2019 New York Times op-ed.
But she also shepherded several progressive reforms that meshed with equitable justice, including the “Back on Track” prison diversion program as a prosecutor, which allowed first-time drug offenders to get a high school diploma and a job instead of incarceration, reported Vox.
“When she became district attorney, no one was talking about progressive prosecutors,” Tim Silard, who worked under Harris at the San Francisco district attorney’s office, told the outlet. “She was absolutely an outlier within the California District Attorneys Association, [and] got some pushback and criticism from there.”
Harris pushed back against California’s “three strikes” law, which triggered mandatory prison time after a third felony, by instructing her office not to prosecute unless the third offense was a serious or violent crime, according to Vox.
One of her biggest crossroads occurred over the death penalty, which she firmly opposed.
After a gang member fatally shot a police officer, she resisted massive calls to seek the death penalty in the case in an effort to stay steadfast in her principles.
The move angered not only the police union but several Democratic legislators, including then Sen. Dianne Feinstein, who called for the death penalty, according to the The New York Times.
Toting the line as Califonia’s attorney general
When Harris ran for the position of attorney general in 2010, she presented herself as a criminal justice reformer, and on many accounts, she followed through on that promise.
Harris started a “first-of-its-kind” racial bias training for police officers and expanded her prison diversion program throughout the state, reported Vox.
She also made the California Department of Justice the first statewide agency to require body cameras and launched a platform that allows the public to track reported killings by police officers, the outlet reported.
But she maintained the “status quo” in many other ways, including with the death penalty and wrongly incarcerated people, reported Vox.
On capital punishment, the once steadfast anti-death penalty prosecutor began enforcing the death sentence and even appealed a court decision that found California’s death penalty system unconstitutional, according to the Times.
Harris’ office also defended law enforcement officials accused of misconduct, including a state prosecutor who allegedly falsified a confession and threatened a defendant with it, the outlet reported.
After a court dismissed the indictment against the suspect, her office appealed it, saying the misconduct did not involve physical violence, reported Vox.
Her office fought to release fewer prisoners even after the U.S. Supreme Court found that the severe overcrowding in California prisons amounted to unconstitutional cruel and unusual punishment, reported the New York Times.
Harris also faced heat after opposing legislation that would require her office to independently investigate fatal police shootings and for failing to endorse statewide regulations on the use of police body cameras, reported the Los Angeles Times.
Harris largely avoided intervening in cases involving killings by the police but slowly shifted that position later in her tenure as attorney general.
After the 2014 killing of Michael Brown in Ferguson, calls demanding investigation of police shootings heightened, but she refused to intervene, citing that it was not her job, reported the Times.
In 2016, however, Harris said there was a “crisis of confidence” in the country’s police officers, and her office began to investigate police misconduct, according to the outlet.
Stronger reform support on Capitol Hill
As a senator, Harris leaned into criminal justice reform. She co-sponsored bills on bail reform, one that would make lynching a federal crime, and threw her support for the First Step Act, a comprehensive piece of legislation aimed at cutting unnecessarily long federal sentences and improving conditions in federal prison.
Harris also backed several bills, including creating her own, on legalizing marijuana and hemp.
During the 2020 presidential primary, she tried to distance herself from her previous tough-on-crime stances, aligning herself with Biden on solitary confinement, federal mandatory minimum sentences and decriminalizing borders, reported The Marshall Project.
Even with her more recent, more liberal positions, as the potential Democratic nominee, Harris will likely have to answer for her record.
When launching her own bid for office in 2020, Harris took “responsibility” for some of the problems, saying, “The bottom line is the buck stops with me, and I take full responsibility for what my office did.”