Kamala Harris: How 2020 hopeful could radically transform America's criminal justice system

Law experts say the California Democrat isn't 'soft' or 'tough' on crime: ‘she's smart'

Kamala Harris hopes voters focus on her career as a top prosecutor when choosing a Democratic nominee to take on Donald Trump in the 2020 presidential election.

That is, if she can first get past the criticisms surrounding her record.

Shortly after announcing her candidacy, the senator was forced to respond to a New York Times Op-Ed penned by University of San Francisco law professor Lara Bazelon, which triggered a debate over whether Ms Harris was truly a “progressive prosecutor” as she had been proudly labelled.

The article condemned Ms Harris for defending the death penalty, upholding wrongful convictions and a series of other apparent failures from her tenure as an attorney general.

"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," Ms Bazelon wrote.

The 2020 contender took "full responsibility" for the criticisms when speaking at one of her first campaign stops on Monday, saying, "The bottom line is the buck stops with me."

"There are many cases," she continued, "where there were folks that made a decision in my office and they had not consulted me and I wish they had."

Law experts and attorneys who worked with Ms Harris over the years debated the merit of referring to her record as “progressive” in a series of interviews conducted by The Independent. However, most, if not all, described her prosecutorial career as at least somewhat "forward-minded," and suggested her potential victory in 2020 could pave the way for historic criminal justice reforms due to her "smart" and "bipartisan" nature towards the issue.

Ms Bazelon said she believed it would be difficult for progressive voters to contend with Ms Harris' tenure as a prosecutor in an interview discussing her Op-Ed with The Independent, saying on Tuesday, "She's going to have to reckon with her record and stop painting it as something it isn't."

"It's important to point out she has a few things she’s done that were forward-minded," Ms Bazelon said. "But it won’t be easy for her to say, ‘I’m a progressive prosecutor’ … she can’t have it both ways."

Ms Harris, the second African-American woman to serve in the US Senate, made the announcement for her candidacy on Martin Luther King Jr Day, releasing a campaign slogan titled "Kamala Harris: For the People" — a nod to her record as a prosecutor in California — and sharing an accompanying video that showcases her record as an attorney general and junior senator.

While she has taken responsibility for several of her reported prosecutorial failures, Ms Harris also continues to incorporate her career as a central component of her candidacy.

“There’s a lot about what I did as a prosecutor that I’m proud of,” she said in a recent interview, “including a recognition that there are fundamental flaws in our criminal justice system.”

She has already faced backlash from the far left and progressive factions of the Democratic Party over her record, and those criticisms were then swiftly covered in real-time and echoed by conservative outlets like Fox News. Still, law experts said Ms Harris’ willingness to work with anyone on criminal justice reform makes her not just a viable candidate to tackle the issue, but perhaps one of the most experienced.

Ms Harris provided initial key support for a major crime reform bill backed by Mr Trump called the First Step Act, calling the legislation “smart on crime” while adding, “we ultimately need to make far greater reforms if we are to right the wrongs that exist in our criminal justice system.”

She was then one of just six senators who pushed Chuck Grassley to advocate for provisions on sentencing reforms to be included in the final version of the bill before it went to the Senate Judiciary Committee for a vote. That strategic move among the coalition of senators was ultimately successful in adding significant sentencing reforms to the final measure, according to Marc Mauer, executive director of The Sentencing Project, an advocacy centre in Washington focused on reducing the use of incarceration in the US.

“Our office has worked with her since she was elected as a senator,” he said. “Senator Harris has been a strong voice for broad criminal justice reform, both in her work on the Judiciary Committee and in her public engagements. This has included most notably advocacy for reform of the harsh mandatory sentencing provisions that apply to many federal drug offenses.”

David Carillo, the executive director of the California Constitution Centre at the University of California, Berkeley, School of Law, pointed to several examples of important actions Ms Harris took as a prosecutor, from suing big banks and for-profit colleges to her “Back on Track” programme launched to reduce recidivism among first-time, non-violent drug offenders.

“Senator Harris was a smart, principled prosecutor,” he said. “I served in San Francisco and California government during her tenures...I think her view has always been to reject the false choice between being tough or soft on crime and to focus on being smart about it."