Vice President Kamala Harris, endorsed by President Biden to succeed him on the Democratic presidential ticket, began her political career as a prosecutor in California, combining criminal justice reforms with a firm approach to certain crimes, Reuters reports. Over more than a dozen years as San Francisco's district attorney and then as California's attorney general, Harris took some stances welcomed by the party's left flank, including opposition to the death penalty and staking out a hard line during negotiations with big banks over home foreclosure abuses. She rankled progressive critics with other moves, including a policy of criminally prosecuting parents of children who skipped school and rejecting a request for DNA testing from a Black man on death row who said he was wrongfully convicted of murder. Her record may serve as material for Republican nominee Donald Trump to depict her as lenient on crime.
Harris has described her strategy as "smart on crime," emphasizing the significance of both preventing and punishing crime, as well as safeguarding defendants' rights and limiting excesses. Harris, 59, in 2003 became the first woman elected as San Francisco's top prosecutor after campaigning in part on a pledge not to seek the death penalty. As district attorney, Harris drew praise from progressives for implementing a program to help young people arrested on non-violent offenses get job training, substance abuse treatment and housing. As attorney general, she launched bias training for state police officers. She attracted criticism from the left for a plan to discourage truancy by prosecuting the parents of chronically absent children - though none went to jail while she was district attorney. Harris said in 2010 that elementary school truancy had fallen 33% over the prior two years. One of Harris' signature achievements as attorney general was obtaining a $1.1 billion judgment against for-profit Corinthian Colleges for misleading students. She also secured an $18 billion settlement in 2012 from banks over foreclosure misconduct. California had been in line to receive around $4 billion as part of the multi-state litigation, but Harris said that was too little.
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