Kamala Harris played a key role in California’s crime catastrophe — voters should be very worried

If what Kamala Harris helped do to California is an indication of what she’d do the nation, voters should be very, very worried. 

As state attorney general from 2011 to 2017, Harris refused to take a position on two ballot initiatives that have come to define modern California — but her office wrote favorable descriptions for both, likely aiding their passage. 

Proposition 47 downgraded felony thefts to misdemeanors when the stolen property had a value of less than $950. 

Critics have blamed it for the binge shoplifting that has followed — forcing retailers to lock up their inventory or even give up and close stores that can’t stay in business because they’re constantly being looted. 

Proposition 57, meanwhile, allowed the early parole of some inmates to reduce the prison population, introducing violent offenders back into society after serving only half of their sentences. 

Out and back 

For instance, Smiley Martin, who has since died in jail, was arrested in connection with a 2022 mass shooting in Sacramento after being released early under Prop. 57 “secret” credits. 

A similar case occurred in 2021, when Aariel Maynor was arrested for murder after being released thanks to the law.

He was sentenced to a minimum of 150 years in prison. 

As San Francisco district attorney, Harris’ office was poorly organized. 

A crime lab scandal that occurred on her watch nearly derailed her 2010 attorney general campaign. 

She and her prosecutors knew that testimony from one of their lab technicians was tainted, yet they never told defense attorneys.

Eventually, as many as 1,500 drug-related cases were dismissed. 

It was the sort of mismanagement that would follow to her attorney general and US senate offices — and reportedly to the vice presidency as well. 

On some occasions, Harris has presented herself as a progressive prosecutor toppling the previous generation’s tough-on-crime regime. 

At other times she had a reputation as a drug warrior, with nearly 2,000 marijuana and hashish offenders incarcerated during her years as attorney general. 

Shallow thinking 

As an example of how schizophrenic her record is, Harris once waged a war on truancy as district attorney, promising to “start prosecuting parents” for their children’s absences.

(Then she tried to backtrack, expressing regret for her zealousness.) 

Hers were never the actions of a deeply nuanced thinker who sees angles others don’t and can bring the light to previously impenetrable gray areas — but rather that of a policy carpetbagger who follows politics rather than the law. 

Harris’ DA and AG terms were both marked by her ideology, but more importantly they served as useful ladders for her political climb as a Democratic “rising star.” 

It was clear to local observers that Harris wanted to move on from those jobs and hope that her performance would be mostly forgotten, apart from her social-justice crusades. 

That didn’t stop her from leaning into her past as a prosecutor as she bashed Donald Trump during a campaign rally earlier this week, though — further evidence that Harris is a chameleon who will play the right role at the right time to gain a political edge. 

As a hard-to-classify brand of California leftist ideology, “Harris-ism” won’t be in our republic’s best interest. 

Kerry Jackson is the William Clement Fellow in California Reform at the Pacific Research Institute.