Fifteen years ago, then-San Francisco District Attorney Kamala Harris was a guest on Jeff Schechtman's radio show. This interview provides an early glimpse into Harris's priorities and approach to policy.
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The media is complaining that Vice President Kamala Harris has not done a press conference since becoming the Democratic nominee.
And they are right. It would be good for Americans to hear from her.
However, when Harris does eventually answer questions, you can rest assured that her responses will be carefully calibrated and focus group-tested.
To really get a sense of her philosophy, her ideas, and her intellect, you have to go back to the time before she was “somebody.”
In 2009, WhoWhatWhy’s Jeff Schechtman interviewed San Francisco District Attorney Kamala Harris, who was running to become California’s attorney general.
In a highly scripted political environment in which candidates seek to define themselves (and their opponents) through speeches and soundbites, his in-depth podcast (which you can listen to in its entirety here), provides rare insights into her views and the way she thinks.
Schechtman’s conversation with Harris focuses on crime, which is once again a key issue heading into the election this fall, and the factors that contribute to it, which begins with making sure kids go to school and receive the services they need to make sure they lead productive lives.
The question should not be whether someone is hard or soft on crime, Harris stressed, but rather whether they are smart on crime.
A decade before the coronavirus pandemic threw the world into chaos, she compared her approach to crime with a public health crisis.
“[W]hen we are faced with an epidemic — a health epidemic, or in this case a crime epidemic — it’s just smarter to deal with the prevention piece first, right? Swine flu, let’s all get inoculated, let’s deal with it at the beginning,” she said.
“But if it has taken hold, if we have sniffles, then let’s deal with some early intervention,” Harris added. “But if we’re at the point of treating the epidemic in the emergency room, it’s too late and it’s too expensive.”
And this “inoculation period” starts with making sure that children actually attend their classes.
If you ask people about their priorities, Harris noted that most of them would list their personal safety in the top five.
“If you ask them what they thought about truancy, it may have hit the top 100 list,” she told Schechtman. “But I would suggest to you it’s one of the biggest factors that if we address and deal with and fix, we’ll see so much benefit on the back end in terms of the money it takes to deal with that kid and our own safety.”
Of course, schools also have to provide students with resources to make sure they can thrive.
One of the things Harris talks about in that regard is offering help to kids with post-traumatic stress disorders.
“Imagine the six- or seven-year-old who goes to sleep every night hearing gunfire, or that same child who goes to sleep every night with violence in the home because of domestic violence,” she said. “Invariably, that child is suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder, but we expect the kid to go to school the next day and learn. And of course, that’s not happening.”
Harris added that, as a coping mechanism, these are then the students who act out and disrupt their own education and that of their peers.
Getting them the help they need can break this cycle.
Another important issue when it comes to tackling crime is to reduce the high rate of recidivism.
Enforcing the law and locking people up is important, but so is giving them the tools to turn their lives around after they served their time and not treating them as pariahs, Harris argues.
She pointed out that “70 percent of them will re-offend if we don’t redirect them when they come back into the community.”
To Harris, that means promoting the development of job skills, helping inmates get their GEDs, and providing other types of support.
Back in 2009, the now-vice president said her “Back on Track” program is working, and that recidivism in San Francisco was down to less than 10 percent.
In California, violent crime has remained about the same since then. While it dipped in the early part of last decade, it has been on the rise again in recent years.
However, property crime rates went down significantly since this podcast (although they are also trending upwards again now).
Obviously, the world has changed significantly since then, and the bipartisanship that helped pass legislation modeled after Back on Track has largely evaporated.
However, listening to Harris talk to Schechtman 15 years ago is about much more than individual policy. It’s about getting the measure of the woman who may become the next US president.
