Kamala Harris is facing backlash over a viral clip that showed her laughing about threatening to send poor parents of truant schoolchildren to prison.
In the resurfaced 2010 video, the California Democrat chuckles about criticism she faced at the time over the aggressive policy.
Since launching her presidential bid, Harris has tried to uphold the image of a “progressive prosecutor” whose enlightened views have never wavered, but her record has suggested otherwise.
Harris contradicts herself
When she was San Francisco’s district attorney in 2010, Harris was known for intimidating the parents of kids who skipped school, including a homeless, single mom. No parents were arrested or jailed, but Harris lauded the approach in her public statements when running for attorney general in 2010 and in a speech after she won the office.
She also lobbied for a bill that would make chronic truancy a crime.
Speaking at the Commonwealth Club in 2010, Harris laughed off critics of the policy and boasted that her movement was a success.
“I believe that a child going without an education is tantamount to a crime. So I decided I was going to start prosecuting parents for truancy. Well, this was a little controversial in San Francisco,” Harris said before bursting into laughter. Take a look:
Kamala Harris at an event hosted by the Commonwealth Club in 2010, explaining her decision as San Francisco DA to get tough on truancy.
Critics of truancy crackdowns say such efforts unfairly target poor parents and children without actually helping students. pic.twitter.com/GKkDpayxuv
— Walker Bragman (@WalkerBragman) January 28, 2019
In her speech, Harris — who seems to relish the title “mean DA Kamala Harris” — endorsed using the “big stick” of law enforcement to threaten poor parents to send their kids to school under penalty of jail time. Harris goes on to laugh about a DA “mediation program” in which she sent “mean”-looking gang and murder prosecutors into schools to frighten parents of truant children into compliance.
To illustrate the success of the policy, Harris mentioned a homeless, single mother of three who was working two jobs when Harris charged her with truancy. The now-senator described it as a successful case of “shining [an] infrared spotlight of public safety” on a woman who needed help.
“By shining this infrared spotlight of public safety on the fact that her children aren’t in school we were able to figure that out, get her access to services that exist, and through that process the attendance of her children improved [and] we dismissed the charges against her, and overall we’ve improved attendance for this population in San Francisco by 20 percent over the last two years,” Harris said.
Progressive prosecutor?
Her 2010 speech is further complicates Harris’ progressive bona fides. According to her critics, aggressively prosecuting poor parents for truancy targets minorities disproportionately and harms, rather than helps, poor families. Harris has also faced criticism from the left for a record that includes upholding wrongful convictions, taking a tough approach to prostitution, and not helping transgender inmates get sex changes.
But Harris hasn’t repented. A Harris spokeswoman said in response to the video last week, “She believed a critical way to keep kids out of jail when they’re older is to keep them in school when they’re young.”
Harris’ record on criminal justice as a district attorney and attorney general in California has come under renewed scrutiny since she entered the presidential race last month. In a CNN town hall last week, she faced some tough questions on her record, including her support of the death penalty despite her personal opposition to it. Harris, attempting to retroactively depict her career as that of a reformer, said at the town hall that she has been “consistent my whole career.”
“My career has been based on an understanding that, one, as a prosecutor, my duty was to seek and make sure that the most vulnerable and voiceless among us are protected,” she said. “I have also worked my whole career to reform the criminal justice system, understanding, to your point, that it is deeply flawed.”
Harris is just the latest Democrat to face a reckoning over past support of tough-on-crime laws. Former Vice President Joe Biden and Hillary Clinton, both considered potential 2020 contenders, have also taken tough questions on the topic.
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