vox--2020-08-12--The Covid-19 pandemic could be the last straw for high drug costs

America ’ s long-running debate over prescription drug prices feels more urgent than ever during the Covid-19 pandemic .
Most people are rooting for the US drug industry — self-styled , and not without reason , as the most innovative in the world — to develop a vaccine or a cure for the disease that has taken more than 160,000 American lives .
But the hope is tempered by an unavoidable fear in the country with the world ’ s highest medical prices : Will it be affordable ?
“ In a sense , this is the whole drug pricing @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Levitt , executive vice president at the Kaiser Family Foundation , told me .
“ We want innovation and new drugs that can save lives , but we also want lower prices.
” According to new polling from Data for Progress and Be a Hero , shared exclusively with Vox , voters in some of 2020 ’ s most important battleground states fall decisively on one side of that debate .
They say they are ready for a more aggressive policy agenda to , in the near term , make Covid-19 vaccines and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ long term , restructure the US pharmaceutical drug industry to lower prices .
From July 24 to August 2 , the left-leaning groups polled 2,051 voters in Arizona , Iowa , Maine , and North Carolina , key battleground states in the presidential and Senate elections , to gauge their feelings toward a progressive agenda to reduce drug costs .
A strong majority , over 70 percent , said they would prefer a candidate who supports making Covid-19 treatments and vaccines free to everybody .
About two-thirds of voters across those states said @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a candidate who favors various reforms — allowing Medicare to directly negotiate the price of medicines , having the government manufacture generic versions of expensive drugs , and revoking companies ’ patents for high-cost medications — over keeping the existing system , which gives drugmakers long monopolies on new or tweaked therapies .
More than half , 58 percent , said they would be more likely to support a candidate who wants to make prescriptions free at the pharmacy by having Medicare cover the costs for all Americans , a kind of “ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the findings were quite consistent across the different states : Support on that particular question , for example , was the lowest in Arizona , where it still hit 55 percent , and highest in Iowa at 60 percent .
“ A lot of it is because of what ’ s happening with Covid , ” said Liz Jaff , president of Be a Hero , who co-founded the group with well-known activist Ady Barkan , who has ALS and who has advocated for single-payer health care in the United States .
“ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ” Covid-19 brought America ’ s inability to restrain medical costs to the fore It is difficult to be sure exactly how much the public ’ s views have changed during the coronavirus crisis .
Medicare negotiations , for example , have always been popular .
Some of these other ideas , like the government manufacturing generic drugs , are still pretty new to the policy debate .
But Americans do appear to have a substantial appetite for aggressive government action to control health care costs during the pandemic : 90 percent said @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Fund that Covid-19 testing and treatment should be free for everyone .
Crises have a way of making people more amenable to government interventions .
Such a change in attitudes has been detected in social science research from World War II and the Great Recession , as I covered recently .
Pollsters have recently found Medicaid is enjoying an uptick in public approval , with more people saying they know somebody relying on the program during the current economic downturn .
But the politics of pharmaceuticals feels particularly fraught .
Pharma ’ s @ @ @ @ @ @ @ is that they need to be able to fund their research and development of new breakthrough therapies .
That argument could find a receptive audience in a public that wants a cure or vaccine for Covid-19 .
On the other hand , the pandemic and its economic consequences have also made Americans as sensitive as ever to the health care cost problem ; the polling from Data for Progress and Be a Hero is strong evidence of that .
“ If drug companies save us from this horrible pandemic , they will be @ @ @ @ @ @ @ hard politically to go after their prices , ” Levitt said .
“ But if the drug companies get too greedy in pricing Covid-19 vaccines or treatments , it could come back to bite them.
” This is a moment of “ morality meeting politics , ” as Jaff described it .
All of the Democratic Senate candidates in the states polled — Mark Kelly in Arizona , Theresa Greenfield in Iowa , Sara Gideon in Maine , and Cal Cunningham in North Carolina — say they support Medicare negotiations for prescription drugs @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Joe Biden .
His newly chosen running mate , Kamala Harris , proposed aggressive government actions during her presidential bid .
House Democrats passed a bill last year to permit negotiations for a certain number of drugs , estimated to save as much as $ 450 billion over 10 years .
As for pharma , Jaff said , “ It ’ s time for them to rethink how much money they can make off sick Americans.
” There is some evidence that pharma has been responsive to public pressure to deliver Covid-19 treatments @ @ @ @ @ @ @ announced the price at which it would sell remdesivir , shown to reduce the length of hospital stays for Covid-19 patients , Stacie Dusetzina , a health policy professor at the Vanderbilt University School of Medicine , called it “ a reasonable price and it ’ s a surprising price.
” It was still $ 3,100 per course ( for the hospitals , not the patients ) , but that was in line with its projected value , according to an analysis by the Institute for Clinical and Economic Review .
“ If @ @ @ @ @ @ @ aggressive high pricing here , you are gon na be in the crosshairs of the entire American public , ” Dusetzina told me at the time .
“ The president , everyone.
” Drugmakers have also pledged to deliver Covid-19 vaccine doses at roughly the same price ( about $ 15 ) they charge the federal government for flu vaccines .
But progressives want to keep up the pressure for more aggressive reforms .
Those low vaccine prices should be a given , in their minds , considering the amount of government investment @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Taxpayers are already footing much of the bill to develop these therapies .
And , based on this new battleground-state polling , they have reason to think the public is on their side .
“ This is the fight we want , ” Jaff said .
“ With the amount of money they make , they should be able to provide this for free.
” Will you become our 20,000th supporter ?
When the economy took a downturn in the spring and we started asking readers for financial contributions , we weren ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Today , we ’ re humbled to say that nearly 20,000 people have chipped in .
The reason is both lovely and surprising : Readers told us that they contribute both because they value explanation and because they value that other people can access it , too .
We have always believed that explanatory journalism is vital for a functioning democracy .
That ’ s never been more important than today , during a public health crisis , racial justice protests , a recession , and a presidential election .
But our distinctive @ @ @ @ @ @ @ alone won ’ t let us keep creating it at the quality and volume this moment requires .
Your financial contribution will not constitute a donation , but it will help keep Vox free for all .
Contribute today from as little as $ 3 .

America’s long-running debate over prescription drug prices feels more urgent than ever during the Covid-19 pandemic.
Most people are rooting for the US drug industry — self-styled, and not without reason, as the most innovative in the world — to develop a vaccine or a cure for the disease that has taken more than 160,000 American lives. But the hope is tempered by an unavoidable fear in the country with the world’s highest medical prices: Will it be affordable?
“In a sense, this is the whole drug pricing dilemma in one act,” Larry Levitt, executive vice president at the Kaiser Family Foundation, told me. “We want innovation and new drugs that can save lives, but we also want lower prices.”
According to new polling from Data for Progress and Be a Hero, shared exclusively with Vox, voters in some of 2020’s most important battleground states fall decisively on one side of that debate. They say they are ready for a more aggressive policy agenda to, in the near term, make Covid-19 vaccines and treatments free, and, in the long term, restructure the US pharmaceutical drug industry to lower prices.
From July 24 to August 2, the left-leaning groups polled 2,051 voters in Arizona, Iowa, Maine, and North Carolina, key battleground states in the presidential and Senate elections, to gauge their feelings toward a progressive agenda to reduce drug costs. A strong majority, over 70 percent, said they would prefer a candidate who supports making Covid-19 treatments and vaccines free to everybody.
About two-thirds of voters across those states said they would be more likely to support a candidate who favors various reforms — allowing Medicare to directly negotiate the price of medicines, having the government manufacture generic versions of expensive drugs, and revoking companies’ patents for high-cost medications — over keeping the existing system, which gives drugmakers long monopolies on new or tweaked therapies.
More than half, 58 percent, said they would be more likely to support a candidate who wants to make prescriptions free at the pharmacy by having Medicare cover the costs for all Americans, a kind of “Medicare for all prescription drugs.” All the findings were quite consistent across the different states: Support on that particular question, for example, was the lowest in Arizona, where it still hit 55 percent, and highest in Iowa at 60 percent.
“A lot of it is because of what’s happening with Covid,” said Liz Jaff, president of Be a Hero, who co-founded the group with well-known activist Ady Barkan, who has ALS and who has advocated for single-payer health care in the United States. “America is realizing we need to change.”
Covid-19 brought America’s inability to restrain medical costs to the fore
It is difficult to be sure exactly how much the public’s views have changed during the coronavirus crisis. Medicare negotiations, for example, have always been popular. Some of these other ideas, like the government manufacturing generic drugs, are still pretty new to the policy debate. But Americans do appear to have a substantial appetite for aggressive government action to control health care costs during the pandemic: 90 percent said in an April poll from the Commonwealth Fund that Covid-19 testing and treatment should be free for everyone.
Crises have a way of making people more amenable to government interventions. Such a change in attitudes has been detected in social science research from World War II and the Great Recession, as I covered recently. Pollsters have recently found Medicaid is enjoying an uptick in public approval, with more people saying they know somebody relying on the program during the current economic downturn.
But the politics of pharmaceuticals feels particularly fraught. Pharma’s most common argument against government price constraints is that they need to be able to fund their research and development of new breakthrough therapies. That argument could find a receptive audience in a public that wants a cure or vaccine for Covid-19.
On the other hand, the pandemic and its economic consequences have also made Americans as sensitive as ever to the health care cost problem; the polling from Data for Progress and Be a Hero is strong evidence of that.
“If drug companies save us from this horrible pandemic, they will be heroes, and it will be very hard politically to go after their prices,” Levitt said. “But if the drug companies get too greedy in pricing Covid-19 vaccines or treatments, it could come back to bite them.”
This is a moment of “morality meeting politics,” as Jaff described it. All of the Democratic Senate candidates in the states polled — Mark Kelly in Arizona, Theresa Greenfield in Iowa, Sara Gideon in Maine, and Cal Cunningham in North Carolina — say they support Medicare negotiations for prescription drugs. So does presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden. His newly chosen running mate, Kamala Harris, proposed aggressive government actions during her presidential bid. House Democrats passed a bill last year to permit negotiations for a certain number of drugs, estimated to save as much as $450 billion over 10 years.
As for pharma, Jaff said, “It’s time for them to rethink how much money they can make off sick Americans.”
There is some evidence that pharma has been responsive to public pressure to deliver Covid-19 treatments at a reasonable price. When Gilead announced the price at which it would sell remdesivir, shown to reduce the length of hospital stays for Covid-19 patients, Stacie Dusetzina, a health policy professor at the Vanderbilt University School of Medicine, called it “a reasonable price and it’s a surprising price.”
It was still $3,100 per course (for the hospitals, not the patients), but that was in line with its projected value, according to an analysis by the Institute for Clinical and Economic Review.
“If you come out and you price really aggressive high pricing here, you are gonna be in the crosshairs of the entire American public,” Dusetzina told me at the time. “The president, everyone.”
Drugmakers have also pledged to deliver Covid-19 vaccine doses at roughly the same price (about $15) they charge the federal government for flu vaccines.
US bankrolled this vaccine, NIH helped develop, ran the trial, i think is paying for the trial, and will still pay Moderna $15 a dose.
This cost itself is similar to what the US pays for each dose of influenza vaccine (according to CDC website) https://t.co/FtU1SEgKx7 — Antonio Regalado (@antonioregalado) August 11, 2020
But progressives want to keep up the pressure for more aggressive reforms. Those low vaccine prices should be a given, in their minds, considering the amount of government investment in Covid-19 research and clinical trials. Taxpayers are already footing much of the bill to develop these therapies.
And, based on this new battleground-state polling, they have reason to think the public is on their side.
“This is the fight we want,” Jaff said. “With the amount of money they make, they should be able to provide this for free.”
Will you become our 20,000th supporter? When the economy took a downturn in the spring and we started asking readers for financial contributions, we weren’t sure how it would go. Today, we’re humbled to say that nearly 20,000 people have chipped in. The reason is both lovely and surprising: Readers told us that they contribute both because they value explanation and because they value that other people can access it, too. We have always believed that explanatory journalism is vital for a functioning democracy. That’s never been more important than today, during a public health crisis, racial justice protests, a recession, and a presidential election. But our distinctive explanatory journalism is expensive, and advertising alone won’t let us keep creating it at the quality and volume this moment requires. Your financial contribution will not constitute a donation, but it will help keep Vox free for all. Contribute today from as little as $3.


vox--2020-08-12--Kamala Harris’s controversial record on criminal justice, explained

Sen. Kamala Harris ( D-CA ) has earned the reputation of a rising star in the Democratic Party , most recently becoming former Vice President Joe Biden ’ s running mate in the presidential election .
But Harris has also faced questions over her record on criminal justice issues — a record that ’ s led some critics to describe her not as a progressive reformer but as a relic of a “ tough on crime ” era going back to the 1990s and 2000s .
A generation after Democrats embraced “ tough on crime ” policies that swelled prison @ @ @ @ @ @ @ make the criminal justice system less punitive and racist — and polls show a majority of Democrats support such efforts .
Harris has argued that her views align with the new progressive movement .
But her record in California , where she was a prosecutor , district attorney , and state attorney general before representing the state in the US Senate , has come under harsh scrutiny and debate since she launched her own presidential campaign in 2019 .
Harris argues that she ’ s fought to reverse incarceration , scale back the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ disparities in the criminal justice system .
But as she has become a prominent political figure — she ’ s had several viral moments questioning President Donald Trump ’ s nominees in the Senate — those more familiar with her criminal justice record , particularly on the left , have voiced their skepticism .
“ In her career , Ms. Harris did not barter or trade to get the support of more conservative law-and-order types ; she gave it all away , ” wrote Lara Bazelon , a law professor and former director @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the Innocent in Los Angeles , in a New York Times op-ed .
Harris ’ s supporters argue that these criticisms sell her short , missing the times she was ahead of the country and her party on criminal justice issues — such as when she implemented prison diversion programs as district attorney and a “ first-of-its-kind ” racial bias training for police officers .
“ Kamala Harris has spent her career fighting for reforms in the criminal justice system and pushing the envelope to keep everyone safer by bringing fairness and accountability @ @ @ @ @ @ @ for Harris , previously told me .
Harris , as part of her previous presidential campaign , also released a criminal justice reform plan that seeks to scale back incarceration , end the death penalty and solitary confinement , ban private prisons , and get rid of cash bail .
Biden also backs a fairly aggressive criminal justice reform plan , despite his own mixed record on criminal justice issues .
A close examination of Harris ’ s record shows it ’ s filled with contradictions .
She pushed for programs that helped @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in prison , but also fought to keep people in prison even after they were proved innocent .
She refused to pursue the death penalty against a man who killed a police officer , but also defended California ’ s death penalty system in court .
She implemented training programs to address police officers ’ racial biases , but also resisted calls to get her office to investigate certain police shootings .
But what seem like contradictions may reflect a balancing act .
Harris ’ s parents worked on civil rights causes , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ aware of the excesses of the criminal justice system — but in office , she played the role of a prosecutor and California ’ s lawyer .
She started in an era when “ tough on crime ” politics were popular across party lines — but she rose to national prominence as criminal justice reform started to take off nationally .
She had an eye on higher political office as support for criminal justice reform became de rigueur for Democrats — but she still had to work as California ’ s top law @ @ @ @ @ @ @ likely made this balancing act even tougher .
In the US , studies have found that more than 90 percent of elected prosecutors are white and more than 80 percent are male .
As a Black and Indian American woman , Harris stood out — inviting scrutiny and skepticism , especially by people who may hold racist stereotypes about how Black people view law enforcement or sexist views about whether women are “ tough ” enough for the job .
Still , the result is the same : As she became more nationally @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a progressive prosecutor , as she ’ d been earlier in her career , and more a reform-lite or even anti-reform attorney general .
Now critics have labeled her a “ cop ” — a sellout for a broken criminal justice system .
How much all of this is a liability for Harris , as a nominee for vice president , remains to be seen , as the Democratic ticket tries to balance support from progressives who have called to end mass incarceration and “ defund the police ” with support from moderates @ @ @ @ @ @ @ law and order ” credentials .
How it plays out may help determine , at least indirectly , whether Biden and Harris can defeat Trump and Vice President Mike Pence in November .
From the beginning of Harris ’ s career in the criminal justice system , she said she saw herself as a progressive working within a system she wanted to change — “ at the table where the decisions are made , ” she told the New York Times Magazine in 2016 .
She started out working at prosecutors ’ offices @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , then became San Francisco ’ s district attorney , the top prosecutor for the city , in 2004 .
In 2011 , she became California ’ s attorney general , the top law enforcement official in the state .
She held that position until 2017 , when she became a US senator for California .
In her more recent memoir , The Truths We Hold , Harris described how she saw her role : “ The job of a progressive prosecutor is to look out for the overlooked , to speak up @ @ @ @ @ @ @ being heard , to see and address the causes of crime , not just their consequences , and to shine a light on the inequality and unfairness that lead to injustice .
It is to recognize that not everyone needs punishment , that what many need , quite plainly , is help.
” It reflects a view embraced by many progressives in the criminal justice reform movement : that the US puts far too many people — particularly people of color — in prison , typically for way too long , and without @ @ @ @ @ @ @ causes ” of crime .
In 2004 , as district attorney of San Francisco , she refused to seek the death penalty against a man convicted of shooting police officer Isaac Espinoza .
She faced opposition from fellow Democrats ; Sen. Dianne Feinstein ( D-CA ) called for the death penalty at the officer ’ s funeral .
But Harris didn ’ t budge — an act of principle that cost her key political allies ( as she received almost no support from police groups during her first run for attorney general in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ more systemic reforms .
Her most successful program as district attorney , “ Back on Track , ” allowed first-time drug offenders , including drug dealers , to get a high school diploma and a job instead of prison time .
Adams , Harris ’ s spokesperson , noted that the program started in 2005 , “ when most prosecutors were using a ‘ tough on crime ’ approach.
” The climate at the time was far less open to progressive criminal justice policy .
The year before , presidential candidate John Kerry @ @ @ @ @ @ @ hiring more cops , adopting a “ zero tolerance ” approach to gangs , and “ cracking down on drug trafficking.
” Crime wasn ’ t a major issue in the 2004 presidential election , but Kerry ’ s platform was the legacy of the 1980s and ’ 90s , when Republicans and Democrats — including President Bill Clinton — competed to see who could be “ tough on crime.
” “ When she became district attorney , no one was talking about progressive prosecutors , ” Tim Silard , who worked under @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ s office , previously told me .
“ She was absolutely an outlier within the California District Attorneys Association , [ and ] got some pushback and criticism from there.
” In one instance — her handling of California ’ s “ three strikes ” law — Harris was arguably ahead of the time .
Under the law , someone who committed a third felony could go to prison for 25 years to life , even if the third felony was a nonviolent crime .
But Harris required that the San Francisco @ @ @ @ @ @ @ for a third strike if the felony was a serious or violent crime .
California voters in 2004 , the year that Harris took office , rejected a ballot initiative to implement a similar reform statewide — though the ballot proposal had some pushback on the details , leading to Harris ’ s own opposition .
It wasn ’ t until 2012 that voters approved the change .
“ There ’ s been incredibly rapid change in public opinion , in attention to criminal justice , ” Silard said , citing his decades-long @ @ @ @ @ @ @ current experience as president of the reform-minded Rosenberg Foundation .
“ Bringing a reverse lens to that is not fair , and also doesn ’ t recognize folks who were courageous at that time.
” Still , Harris did embrace some “ tough ” policies while in the district attorney ’ s office , such as an anti-truancy program that targeted parents of kids who skipped school and threatened them with prosecution and punishment to push them to get their children to class .
As she geared up to run for California attorney @ @ @ @ @ @ @ as a criminal justice reformer , focusing on improving support for people leaving prison , and published a book in 2009 , Smart on Crime , on criminal justice reform .
By this point , Harris wasn ’ t so much ahead of her time .
Criminal justice reform had spread nationally : Congress passed the Fair Sentencing Act of 2010 , effectively reducing penalties for crack cocaine .
States , facing budget constraints from housing so many prisoners , started to roll back punishments for nonviolent crimes — even in conservative states @ @ @ @ @ @ @ books like 2010 ’ s The New Jim Crow by Michelle Alexander drew attention , particularly among white progressives , to a criminal justice system plagued by vast racial disparities .
( Harris ’ s 2009 book , by contrast , was “ largely colorblind ” and “ mentions racial bias in policing just twice , ” Molly Hensley-Clancy noted at BuzzFeed . )
The progressive prosecutor has also in recent years become much more common , exemplified by Larry Krasner in Philadelphia , Kim Foxx in Cook County ( Chicago ) , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ is part of why many of Harris ’ s next moves , as California attorney general , disappointed some progressives and criminal justice reformers , including some of her former supporters .
Based on Harris ’ s record , supporters easily could have expected her to come into the California Department of Justice as attorney general and really shake things up .
But that didn ’ t happen : Her office ’ s handling of over-incarceration , the death penalty , and wrongly incarcerated people were among the several issues in which Harris @ @ @ @ @ @ @ status quo .
She implemented some reforms : She expanded her “ Back on Track ” program to other parts of the state .
After Black Lives Matter took off , she introduced and expanded what her office described as “ first-of-its-kind training ” to address racial bias as well as procedural justice — earning praise from local newspapers .
She made the California Department of Justice the first statewide agency to require body cameras .
And she launched OpenJustice , a platform that , among other data , allows the public to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ But Harris also allowed many parts of the Justice Department to essentially operate as they long had , which at times led to what many now see as major injustices .
In many cases , this led to her office making decisions that Harris , under scrutiny , tried to distance herself from .
For example , Harris ’ s office fought to release fewer prisoners , even after the US Supreme Court found that overcrowding in California prisons was so bad that it amounted to unconstitutional cruel and unusual punishment .
At @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the state couldn ’ t release some prisoners because it would deplete its pool for prison labor — but Harris quickly clarified that she was not aware her office was going with that argument until it was reported by media .
Or consider Harris ’ s handling of appeals for release by innocent people in prison .
In one case , her office argued against Daniel Larsen , who was proven innocent by the Innocence Project , because , Harris ’ s office claimed , he filed his petition for release far too @ @ @ @ @ @ @ court disagreed , allowing Larsen ’ s release in 2013 .
( In the New York Times , Bazelon listed several more such cases . )
Harris ’ s supporters argue that Harris likely wasn ’ t closely involved in these cases because Justice Department policy didn ’ t require state lawyers to seek approval from the attorney general .
As Harris said at a primary campaign event , “ There are cases … where there were folks that made a decision in my office and they had not consulted me , and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ could have changed department policy and become more hands-on in pushing reform , if she was willing to risk a potential backlash from the people under her .
Then there ’ s the death penalty .
Harris remains personally opposed to the death penalty , and earlier in her career , she ’ d been willing to incur political backlash by refusing to seek it in 2004 .
But as attorney general , she told voters she would enforce capital punishment .
And she did : In 2014 , she appealed a judge @ @ @ @ @ @ @ s death penalty system unconstitutional .
Harris didn ’ t have to do this .
In another case , she declined to defend Proposition 8 , which prohibited same-sex marriage .
But in office , she seemed to avoid antagonizing the rank and file — which opposition to the death penalty and other “ tough on crime ” policies could do .
She often described herself as one of them , calling herself California ’ s “ top cop ” and writing in her 2009 book that liberals need to move beyond “ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ overlooked and defended law enforcement officials accused of misconduct .
In one such case , a state prosecutor , Robert Murray , falsified a confession , using it to threaten the defendant with life in prison .
After a court threw out the indictment , Harris ’ s office appealed it , dismissing the misconduct because it did not involve physical violence .
Harris also resisted some attempts to hold police accountable for shootings , including a bill that would have required the attorney general ’ s office to investigate killings by police @ @ @ @ @ @ @ police-worn body cameras .
She also defied calls to have her office quickly investigate certain police shootings in California .
“ There ’ s lots of resistance [ to reform ] , both within your own ranks and then from the cops and their allies , ” Silard told me .
And acting differently in these situations could have upset the rank and file — after Harris narrowly won her election in 2010 by less than 1 percentage point , without the support of most law enforcement groups .
“ How many more @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in ?
” an activist and former supporter , Phelicia Jones , told the San Francisco Chronicle in 2016 , regarding police shootings .
Jones went on , directing her comments to Harris : “ We don ’ t even know that you care .
You have turned your back on the people who got you to where you are.
” In the Senate , Harris has championed criminal justice reform Since her Senate campaign in 2016 , Harris has tried to avoid the faulty parts of her record , and instead emphasized @ @ @ @ @ @ @ implemented over the years .
She has adopted sweeping rhetoric about the criminal justice system , arguing that it needs to be systematically changed .
Her presidential primary campaign website characterized her as “ for the people , ” “ speaking truth , demanding justice , ” and “ fighting to fix our broken criminal justice system.
” Consider one of Harris ’ s common lines : She ’ s described her support for criminal justice reform as pushing for a better return on investment , pointing out that US prisons see recidivism @ @ @ @ @ @ @ more .
As Harris told the New York Times Magazine in 2016 , “ If we were talking about any other system where you have a failure rate of about 70 percent , the investors would say , at the very least , do a wholesale reconstruction , if not shut it down.
” This is strong rhetoric — which suggests that Harris ’ s ultimate aim isn ’ t to merely tinker with the criminal justice system , but to seriously transform it .
This aligns Harris far more with where Democrats @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , ACLU types , and criminal justice reformers push the party to the left on this issue .
In the Senate , Harris has consistently backed reforms , although her leadership role on these issues hasn ’ t been as extensive as that of some other senators .
She introduced a bail reform bill with Sen. Rand Paul ( R-KY ) that would encourage states to reform or replace their bail systems .
This is a big part of the criminal justice system : By most estimates , hundreds of thousands of people @ @ @ @ @ @ @ they ’ ve been convicted of a crime , just because they can ’ t afford to pay their bail .
A lot of advocacy work is now dedicated to getting rid of money bail almost entirely , which some places , like Washington , DC , have done with success .
But the bill hasn ’ t moved far in Congress — although it ’ s now part of Harris ’ s presidential campaign platform .
In a team-up with Sens .
Cory Booker ( D-NJ ) and Tim Scott ( R-SC @ @ @ @ @ @ @ that would for the first time make lynching a federal crime , which has long been a goal for racial justice and civil rights activists .
A final version of the bill is currently held up in the Senate .
Harris also voted for the First Step Act , the most significant federal criminal justice reform bill to get through Congress in decades — although she tweeted at length about the bill ’ s shortcomings .
She signed on to Booker ’ s marijuana legalization bill , introduced her own bill to decriminalize @ @ @ @ @ @ @ voted to legalize hemp .
After the 2020 Black Lives Matter protests over the Minneapolis police killing of George Floyd , Harris also backed more aggressive reforms to US policing , telling Meghan McCain on The View that the country is “ reimagining how we do public safety in America ” and speaking favorably of shifting resources from law enforcement to addressing the “ root causes ” of crime , such as poverty , education , and mental health issues .
Other Democratic senators , though , have gone a bit further on @ @ @ @ @ @ @ one , introduced the Reverse Mass Incarceration Act — an effort , however flawed , to get states to systematically reduce incarceration rates .
Harris has yet to introduce bills that are just as sweeping , or any systemic reform bills besides her bail proposal , even as she uses rhetoric decrying the criminal justice system as a whole .
Harris ’ s limited role to this point is perhaps expected for a junior senator , but it may be disappointing for people expecting more from a presidential contender with roots in the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ closer to “ a wholesale reconstruction ” than tinkering at the edges .
But at least when the issue comes to a vote , she ’ s so far consistently been on the reform side in the Senate — and has made support for reform central to her message as she ’ s run for Senate , then president , and now vice president .
Progressives will have to weigh what Harris is saying now versus parts of her past The question Harris now faces : Are the reforms she pushed for as @ @ @ @ @ @ @ her consistently progressive work in the Senate , enough to satisfy progressives and criminal justice reformers ?
The concern here isn ’ t merely figuring out whether Harris is an honest person .
A constant worry in criminal justice work is what would happen if , say , the crime rate started to rise once again .
In such a scenario , there would be considerably more pressure on lawmakers — and it ’ d at least be easier for them — to go back to “ tough on crime ” rhetoric , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ rates favorably .
Given that the central progressive claim is that these policies are racist and , based on the research , ineffective for fighting crime in the first place , any potential for backsliding in this area if it becomes politically inconvenient is very alarming .
This happened before .
From the 1960s through the ’ 90s , crime and drug use were skyrocketing in the US .
Americans were much more likely , especially in the early ’ 90s , to say that crime was the most important problem facing the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ lawmakers , both Democrats and Republicans , to try to find solutions that they could sell to the public — and they mostly landed on a more punitive criminal justice system .
But any link to those “ tough on crime ” policies now could hurt Harris — and Biden — politically .
According to a 2016 Vox/Morning Consult survey , around two-thirds of Democrats and a majority of all voters support removing mandatory minimum sentences for nonviolent drug offenders , reducing sentences for drug offenses in general , sentencing more people to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , and adopting a national law decriminalizing marijuana .
Other polls have found even higher support for criminal justice reforms among Democrats and other voters .
In response to the criticisms , Harris said during the first day of her presidential campaign that she took “ responsibility ” for some of the problems : “ The bottom line is the buck stops with me , and I take full responsibility for what my office did.
” In response to a question about her office ’ s efforts when she was attorney general , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Corrections , to stop a transgender inmate from getting gender-affirming surgery , Harris elaborated further .
“ I was the attorney general of California for two terms , and I had a host of clients that I was obligated to defend and represent , ” she said .
“ I couldn ’ t fire my clients and there were unfortunately situations that occurred where my clients took positions that were contrary to my beliefs.
” More broadly , Harris has explained that she rejects what she describes as “ the false choice ” @ @ @ @ @ @ @ enforcement .
“ I will never make an excuse for saying this , or an apology for saying this : One human being kills another human being , a woman is raped , a child is molested , there needs to be serious consequence and accountability , ” she said during a one-hour interview for her memoir in January 2019 .
“ And I ’ m always going to say that , and I ’ m going to say America has a problem with mass incarceration , we have been locking up Black @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and ] we have built-in biases that are implicit and explicit that need to be addressed.
” And after she announced her presidential bid , Harris announced a criminal justice reform plan that would enact an ambitious list of policy changes to scale back mass incarceration , “ tough on crime ” policing , and the war on drugs .
Some argue that Harris might not ever be redeemed , because the job she took at the time she took it just doesn ’ t line up with progressive values today .
As @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Bernie Sanders campaign , previously wrote for the Intercept , “ To become a prosecutor is to make a choice to align oneself with a powerful and fundamentally biased system.
” Yet some seem to have forgiven Harris .
Shaun King , a prominent racial justice advocate and former surrogate for Sanders , told BuzzFeed that he ’ s come around to Harris , despite her record as a prosecutor .
“ I was a little slow to trust her as a reformer on criminal justice , but I think she ’ s @ @ @ @ @ @ @ said .
“ I think she ’ s become one of the better spokespersons for really serious criminal justice reform in the Democratic Party.
” King repeated as much after Harris was picked as Biden ’ s running mate .
For Harris , where voters land in this debate could help decide how much she can help Biden defeat Trump .
Will you become our 20,000th supporter ?
When the economy took a downturn in the spring and we started asking readers for financial contributions , we weren ’ t sure how it @ @ @ @ @ @ @ re humbled to say that nearly 20,000 people have chipped in .
The reason is both lovely and surprising : Readers told us that they contribute both because they value explanation and because they value that other people can access it , too .
We have always believed that explanatory journalism is vital for a functioning democracy .
That ’ s never been more important than today , during a public health crisis , racial justice protests , a recession , and a presidential election .
But our distinctive explanatory journalism is expensive @ @ @ @ @ @ @ let us keep creating it at the quality and volume this moment requires .
Your financial contribution will not constitute a donation , but it will help keep Vox free for all .
Contribute today from as little as $ 3 .

Sen. Kamala Harris (D-CA) has earned the reputation of a rising star in the Democratic Party, most recently becoming former Vice President Joe Biden’s running mate in the presidential election. But Harris has also faced questions over her record on criminal justice issues — a record that’s led some critics to describe her not as a progressive reformer but as a relic of a “tough on crime” era going back to the 1990s and 2000s.
A generation after Democrats embraced “tough on crime” policies that swelled prison populations, progressive activists are pushing to make the criminal justice system less punitive and racist — and polls show a majority of Democrats support such efforts. Harris has argued that her views align with the new progressive movement. But her record in California, where she was a prosecutor, district attorney, and state attorney general before representing the state in the US Senate, has come under harsh scrutiny and debate since she launched her own presidential campaign in 2019.
Harris argues that she’s fought to reverse incarceration, scale back the war on drugs, and address racial disparities in the criminal justice system. But as she has become a prominent political figure — she’s had several viral moments questioning President Donald Trump’s nominees in the Senate — those more familiar with her criminal justice record, particularly on the left, have voiced their skepticism.
“In her career, Ms. Harris did not barter or trade to get the support of more conservative law-and-order types; she gave it all away,” wrote Lara Bazelon, a law professor and former director for the Loyola Law School Project for the Innocent in Los Angeles, in a New York Times op-ed.
Harris’s supporters argue that these criticisms sell her short, missing the times she was ahead of the country and her party on criminal justice issues — such as when she implemented prison diversion programs as district attorney and a “first-of-its-kind” racial bias training for police officers.
“Kamala Harris has spent her career fighting for reforms in the criminal justice system and pushing the envelope to keep everyone safer by bringing fairness and accountability,” Lily Adams, a spokesperson for Harris at the time, previously told me.
Harris, as part of her previous presidential campaign, also released a criminal justice reform plan that seeks to scale back incarceration, end the death penalty and solitary confinement, ban private prisons, and get rid of cash bail. Biden also backs a fairly aggressive criminal justice reform plan, despite his own mixed record on criminal justice issues.
A close examination of Harris’s record shows it’s filled with contradictions. She pushed for programs that helped people find jobs instead of putting them in prison, but also fought to keep people in prison even after they were proved innocent. She refused to pursue the death penalty against a man who killed a police officer, but also defended California’s death penalty system in court. She implemented training programs to address police officers’ racial biases, but also resisted calls to get her office to investigate certain police shootings.
But what seem like contradictions may reflect a balancing act. Harris’s parents worked on civil rights causes, and she came from a background well aware of the excesses of the criminal justice system — but in office, she played the role of a prosecutor and California’s lawyer. She started in an era when “tough on crime” politics were popular across party lines — but she rose to national prominence as criminal justice reform started to take off nationally. She had an eye on higher political office as support for criminal justice reform became de rigueur for Democrats — but she still had to work as California’s top law enforcement official.
Her race and gender likely made this balancing act even tougher. In the US, studies have found that more than 90 percent of elected prosecutors are white and more than 80 percent are male. As a Black and Indian American woman, Harris stood out — inviting scrutiny and skepticism, especially by people who may hold racist stereotypes about how Black people view law enforcement or sexist views about whether women are “tough” enough for the job.
Still, the result is the same: As she became more nationally visible, Harris was less known as a progressive prosecutor, as she’d been earlier in her career, and more a reform-lite or even anti-reform attorney general. Now critics have labeled her a “cop” — a sellout for a broken criminal justice system.
How much all of this is a liability for Harris, as a nominee for vice president, remains to be seen, as the Democratic ticket tries to balance support from progressives who have called to end mass incarceration and “defund the police” with support from moderates who may prefer a candidate with “law and order” credentials. How it plays out may help determine, at least indirectly, whether Biden and Harris can defeat Trump and Vice President Mike Pence in November.
Harris as a “progressive prosecutor”
From the beginning of Harris’s career in the criminal justice system, she said she saw herself as a progressive working within a system she wanted to change — “at the table where the decisions are made,” she told the New York Times Magazine in 2016.
She started out working at prosecutors’ offices in the late 1980s and early 1990s, then became San Francisco’s district attorney, the top prosecutor for the city, in 2004. In 2011, she became California’s attorney general, the top law enforcement official in the state. She held that position until 2017, when she became a US senator for California.
In her more recent memoir, The Truths We Hold, Harris described how she saw her role: “The job of a progressive prosecutor is to look out for the overlooked, to speak up for those whose voices aren’t being heard, to see and address the causes of crime, not just their consequences, and to shine a light on the inequality and unfairness that lead to injustice. It is to recognize that not everyone needs punishment, that what many need, quite plainly, is help.”
It reflects a view embraced by many progressives in the criminal justice reform movement: that the US puts far too many people — particularly people of color — in prison, typically for way too long, and without doing enough to fight the “root causes” of crime.
Parts of Harris’s record match that rhetoric.
In 2004, as district attorney of San Francisco, she refused to seek the death penalty against a man convicted of shooting police officer Isaac Espinoza. She faced opposition from fellow Democrats; Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) called for the death penalty at the officer’s funeral. But Harris didn’t budge — an act of principle that cost her key political allies (as she received almost no support from police groups during her first run for attorney general in 2010).
Harris also pushed for more systemic reforms. Her most successful program as district attorney, “Back on Track,” allowed first-time drug offenders, including drug dealers, to get a high school diploma and a job instead of prison time. Adams, Harris’s previous spokesperson, noted that the program started in 2005, “when most prosecutors were using a ‘tough on crime’ approach.”
The climate at the time was far less open to progressive criminal justice policy. The year before, presidential candidate John Kerry had run, in part, on hiring more cops, adopting a “zero tolerance” approach to gangs, and “cracking down on drug trafficking.” Crime wasn’t a major issue in the 2004 presidential election, but Kerry’s platform was the legacy of the 1980s and ’90s, when Republicans and Democrats — including President Bill Clinton — competed to see who could be “tough on crime.”
“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, previously told me. “She was absolutely an outlier within the California District Attorneys Association, [and] got some pushback and criticism from there.”
In one instance — her handling of California’s “three strikes” law — Harris was arguably ahead of the time. Under the law, someone who committed a third felony could go to prison for 25 years to life, even if the third felony was a nonviolent crime. But Harris required that the San Francisco district attorney’s office only charge for a third strike if the felony was a serious or violent crime.
California voters in 2004, the year that Harris took office, rejected a ballot initiative to implement a similar reform statewide — though the ballot proposal had some pushback on the details, leading to Harris’s own opposition. It wasn’t until 2012 that voters approved the change.
“There’s been incredibly rapid change in public opinion, in attention to criminal justice,” Silard said, citing his decades-long experience in the criminal justice system and current experience as president of the reform-minded Rosenberg Foundation. “Bringing a reverse lens to that is not fair, and also doesn’t recognize folks who were courageous at that time.”
Still, Harris did embrace some “tough” policies while in the district attorney’s office, such as an anti-truancy program that targeted parents of kids who skipped school and threatened them with prosecution and punishment to push them to get their children to class.
As she geared up to run for California attorney general in 2010, Harris positioned herself as a criminal justice reformer, focusing on improving support for people leaving prison, and published a book in 2009, Smart on Crime, on criminal justice reform.
By this point, Harris wasn’t so much ahead of her time. Criminal justice reform had spread nationally: Congress passed the Fair Sentencing Act of 2010, effectively reducing penalties for crack cocaine. States, facing budget constraints from housing so many prisoners, started to roll back punishments for nonviolent crimes — even in conservative states like Texas and South Carolina.
And books like 2010’s The New Jim Crow by Michelle Alexander drew attention, particularly among white progressives, to a criminal justice system plagued by vast racial disparities. (Harris’s 2009 book, by contrast, was “largely colorblind” and “mentions racial bias in policing just twice,” Molly Hensley-Clancy noted at BuzzFeed.)
The progressive prosecutor has also in recent years become much more common, exemplified by Larry Krasner in Philadelphia, Kim Foxx in Cook County (Chicago), and several others.
That changing context is part of why many of Harris’s next moves, as California attorney general, disappointed some progressives and criminal justice reformers, including some of her former supporters.
Harris’s mixed record as attorney general
Based on Harris’s record, supporters easily could have expected her to come into the California Department of Justice as attorney general and really shake things up. But that didn’t happen: Her office’s handling of over-incarceration, the death penalty, and wrongly incarcerated people were among the several issues in which Harris, by and large, maintained the status quo.
She implemented some reforms: She expanded her “Back on Track” program to other parts of the state. After Black Lives Matter took off, she introduced and expanded what her office described as “first-of-its-kind training” to address racial bias as well as procedural justice — earning praise from local newspapers. She made the California Department of Justice the first statewide agency to require body cameras. And she launched OpenJustice, a platform that, among other data, allows the public to track reported killings by police officers.
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But Harris also allowed many parts of the Justice Department to essentially operate as they long had, which at times led to what many now see as major injustices. In many cases, this led to her office making decisions that Harris, under scrutiny, tried to distance herself from.
For example, Harris’s office fought to release fewer prisoners, even after the US Supreme Court found that overcrowding in California prisons was so bad that it amounted to unconstitutional cruel and unusual punishment. At one point, her lawyers argued that the state couldn’t release some prisoners because it would deplete its pool for prison labor — but Harris quickly clarified that she was not aware her office was going with that argument until it was reported by media.
Or consider Harris’s handling of appeals for release by innocent people in prison. In one case, her office argued against Daniel Larsen, who was proven innocent by the Innocence Project, because, Harris’s office claimed, he filed his petition for release far too late after a legal deadline. The court disagreed, allowing Larsen’s release in 2013. (In the New York Times, Bazelon listed several more such cases.)
Harris’s supporters argue that Harris likely wasn’t closely involved in these cases because Justice Department policy didn’t require state lawyers to seek approval from the attorney general. As Harris said at a primary campaign event, “There are cases … where there were folks that made a decision in my office and they had not consulted me, and I wish they had.” But Harris could have changed department policy and become more hands-on in pushing reform, if she was willing to risk a potential backlash from the people under her.
Then there’s the death penalty. Harris remains personally opposed to the death penalty, and earlier in her career, she’d been willing to incur political backlash by refusing to seek it in 2004. But as attorney general, she told voters she would enforce capital punishment. And she did: In 2014, she appealed a judge’s decision that deemed California’s death penalty system unconstitutional.
Harris didn’t have to do this. In another case, she declined to defend Proposition 8, which prohibited same-sex marriage.
But in office, she seemed to avoid antagonizing the rank and file — which opposition to the death penalty and other “tough on crime” policies could do. She often described herself as one of them, calling herself California’s “top cop” and writing in her 2009 book that liberals need to move beyond “biases against law enforcement.”
Harris also overlooked and defended law enforcement officials accused of misconduct. In one such case, a state prosecutor, Robert Murray, falsified a confession, using it to threaten the defendant with life in prison. After a court threw out the indictment, Harris’s office appealed it, dismissing the misconduct because it did not involve physical violence.
Harris also resisted some attempts to hold police accountable for shootings, including a bill that would have required the attorney general’s office to investigate killings by police and efforts to create statewide standards for police-worn body cameras. She also defied calls to have her office quickly investigate certain police shootings in California.
“There’s lots of resistance [to reform], both within your own ranks and then from the cops and their allies,” Silard told me. And acting differently in these situations could have upset the rank and file — after Harris narrowly won her election in 2010 by less than 1 percentage point, without the support of most law enforcement groups.
But her inaction angered activists.
“How many more people need to die before she steps in?” an activist and former supporter, Phelicia Jones, told the San Francisco Chronicle in 2016, regarding police shootings. Jones went on, directing her comments to Harris: “We don’t even know that you care. You have turned your back on the people who got you to where you are.”
In the Senate, Harris has championed criminal justice reform
Since her Senate campaign in 2016, Harris has tried to avoid the faulty parts of her record, and instead emphasized the reforms she’s supported and implemented over the years. She has adopted sweeping rhetoric about the criminal justice system, arguing that it needs to be systematically changed. Her presidential primary campaign website characterized her as “for the people,” “speaking truth, demanding justice,” and “fighting to fix our broken criminal justice system.”
Consider one of Harris’s common lines: She’s described her support for criminal justice reform as pushing for a better return on investment, pointing out that US prisons see recidivism rates as high as 70 percent or more. As Harris told the New York Times Magazine in 2016, “If we were talking about any other system where you have a failure rate of about 70 percent, the investors would say, at the very least, do a wholesale reconstruction, if not shut it down.”
This is strong rhetoric — which suggests that Harris’s ultimate aim isn’t to merely tinker with the criminal justice system, but to seriously transform it. This aligns Harris far more with where Democrats are today, as Black Lives Matter, ACLU types, and criminal justice reformers push the party to the left on this issue.
In the Senate, Harris has consistently backed reforms, although her leadership role on these issues hasn’t been as extensive as that of some other senators.
She introduced a bail reform bill with Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) that would encourage states to reform or replace their bail systems. This is a big part of the criminal justice system: By most estimates, hundreds of thousands of people are in jail right now, before they’ve been convicted of a crime, just because they can’t afford to pay their bail. A lot of advocacy work is now dedicated to getting rid of money bail almost entirely, which some places, like Washington, DC, have done with success. But the bill hasn’t moved far in Congress — although it’s now part of Harris’s presidential campaign platform.
In a team-up with Sens. Cory Booker (D-NJ) and Tim Scott (R-SC), Harris also introduced a bill that would for the first time make lynching a federal crime, which has long been a goal for racial justice and civil rights activists. A final version of the bill is currently held up in the Senate.
Harris also voted for the First Step Act, the most significant federal criminal justice reform bill to get through Congress in decades — although she tweeted at length about the bill’s shortcomings. She signed on to Booker’s marijuana legalization bill, introduced her own bill to decriminalize marijuana at the federal level, and voted to legalize hemp.
After the 2020 Black Lives Matter protests over the Minneapolis police killing of George Floyd, Harris also backed more aggressive reforms to US policing, telling Meghan McCain on The View that the country is “reimagining how we do public safety in America” and speaking favorably of shifting resources from law enforcement to addressing the “root causes” of crime, such as poverty, education, and mental health issues.
Other Democratic senators, though, have gone a bit further on criminal justice issues. Booker, for one, introduced the Reverse Mass Incarceration Act — an effort, however flawed, to get states to systematically reduce incarceration rates. Harris has yet to introduce bills that are just as sweeping, or any systemic reform bills besides her bail proposal, even as she uses rhetoric decrying the criminal justice system as a whole.
Harris’s limited role to this point is perhaps expected for a junior senator, but it may be disappointing for people expecting more from a presidential contender with roots in the criminal justice system and who promised something closer to “a wholesale reconstruction” than tinkering at the edges.
But at least when the issue comes to a vote, she’s so far consistently been on the reform side in the Senate — and has made support for reform central to her message as she’s run for Senate, then president, and now vice president.
Progressives will have to weigh what Harris is saying now versus parts of her past
The question Harris now faces: Are the reforms she pushed for as a prosecutor and attorney general, and her consistently progressive work in the Senate, enough to satisfy progressives and criminal justice reformers?
The concern here isn’t merely figuring out whether Harris is an honest person. A constant worry in criminal justice work is what would happen if, say, the crime rate started to rise once again. In such a scenario, there would be considerably more pressure on lawmakers — and it’d at least be easier for them — to go back to “tough on crime” rhetoric, framing more aggressive policing and higher incarceration rates favorably.
Given that the central progressive claim is that these policies are racist and, based on the research, ineffective for fighting crime in the first place, any potential for backsliding in this area if it becomes politically inconvenient is very alarming.
This happened before. From the 1960s through the ’90s, crime and drug use were skyrocketing in the US. Americans were much more likely, especially in the early ’90s, to say that crime was the most important problem facing the country at the time. That drove lawmakers, both Democrats and Republicans, to try to find solutions that they could sell to the public — and they mostly landed on a more punitive criminal justice system.
But any link to those “tough on crime” policies now could hurt Harris — and Biden — politically. According to a 2016 Vox/Morning Consult survey, around two-thirds of Democrats and a majority of all voters support removing mandatory minimum sentences for nonviolent drug offenders, reducing sentences for drug offenses in general, sentencing more people to probation and community service instead of prison, and adopting a national law decriminalizing marijuana. Other polls have found even higher support for criminal justice reforms among Democrats and other voters.
In response to the criticisms, Harris said during the first day of her presidential campaign that she took “responsibility” for some of the problems: “The bottom line is the buck stops with me, and I take full responsibility for what my office did.”
In response to a question about her office’s efforts when she was attorney general, on behalf of the California Department of Corrections, to stop a transgender inmate from getting gender-affirming surgery, Harris elaborated further.
“I was the attorney general of California for two terms, and I had a host of clients that I was obligated to defend and represent,” she said. “I couldn’t fire my clients and there were unfortunately situations that occurred where my clients took positions that were contrary to my beliefs.”
More broadly, Harris has explained that she rejects what she describes as “the false choice” between criminal justice reform and supporting law enforcement.
“I will never make an excuse for saying this, or an apology for saying this: One human being kills another human being, a woman is raped, a child is molested, there needs to be serious consequence and accountability,” she said during a one-hour interview for her memoir in January 2019. “And I’m always going to say that, and I’m going to say America has a problem with mass incarceration, we have been locking up Black and brown men in particular, [and] we have built-in biases that are implicit and explicit that need to be addressed.”
And after she announced her presidential bid, Harris announced a criminal justice reform plan that would enact an ambitious list of policy changes to scale back mass incarceration, “tough on crime” policing, and the war on drugs.
Some argue that Harris might not ever be redeemed, because the job she took at the time she took it just doesn’t line up with progressive values today. As Briahna Gray, who worked for the Bernie Sanders campaign, previously wrote for the Intercept, “To become a prosecutor is to make a choice to align oneself with a powerful and fundamentally biased system.”
Yet some seem to have forgiven Harris. Shaun King, a prominent racial justice advocate and former surrogate for Sanders, told BuzzFeed that he’s come around to Harris, despite her record as a prosecutor. “I was a little slow to trust her as a reformer on criminal justice, but I think she’s proven herself to me,” he said. “I think she’s become one of the better spokespersons for really serious criminal justice reform in the Democratic Party.” King repeated as much after Harris was picked as Biden’s running mate.
For Harris, where voters land in this debate could help decide how much she can help Biden defeat Trump.
Will you become our 20,000th supporter? When the economy took a downturn in the spring and we started asking readers for financial contributions, we weren’t sure how it would go. Today, we’re humbled to say that nearly 20,000 people have chipped in. The reason is both lovely and surprising: Readers told us that they contribute both because they value explanation and because they value that other people can access it, too. We have always believed that explanatory journalism is vital for a functioning democracy. That’s never been more important than today, during a public health crisis, racial justice protests, a recession, and a presidential election. But our distinctive explanatory journalism is expensive, and advertising alone won’t let us keep creating it at the quality and volume this moment requires. Your financial contribution will not constitute a donation, but it will help keep Vox free for all. Contribute today from as little as $3.