August 29, 2024
In 2009 Kamala Harris, a career prosecutor in California with nearly two decades of experience, ran for the office of California Attorney General. To coincide with her campaign Harris wrote — with a co-author — a book titled “Smart on Crime” in which she outlined her philosophy on criminal justice. The theme of Smart on Crime was that finite resources in the criminal justice sphere could be spent more wisely “to create a future with safer streets, lower rates of recidivism, and a stronger, better-educated workforce.”
Harris clearly understood that Americans universally wanted to be safe from crime. “Crime is a non-partisan issue,” she wrote. “Democrats, Republicans, and Independents all suffer from crime. And they all want to be safe.”
Harris’ approach was to apply “the logic and principles of economics to the fight on crime.” She sought to achieve “the most safety for the lowest cost,” and lamented the spending of “billions of dollars on ineffective solutions.” Her aim was to show how San Francisco and other communities could go “on the offensive” by employing “smarter, more effective programs” in order to “start doing something about reducing crimes before the prosecutors … ever suit up for court.”
Although Smart on Crime acknowledged the existence of trans-national crime, the Chinese gangs present in San Francisco since the 1970s and the Latin American drug cartels ubiquitous since the 1980s apparently weren’t on Harris’ radar in 2009. Her references to cross-border crime were limited to cybercrime, but she acknowledged that “in urban areas across the country … we have gangs that have migrated from Russia, Southeast Asia, and Central America who are terrorizing communities large and small. Gangs traffic guns, drugs, and sometimes people, across both state and international borders.”
“Cholo low rider” cars were a common sight in the 1980s Mission District gang scene. SOURCE: Juan Valdez, “The Mission’s Hidden Gang History: A Quick Snapshot.”
FoundSF.org, undated.
Harris wrote, “gangs represent a form of social cancer in our communities. Much as a small tumor can unleash so much harm in a human body many times larger, a relatively small number of individuals who are active gang members can sap the life and hopefulness of a community, a neighborhood, or a family.…
“So, how do we attack this cancer? We must begin with an unequivocal No Tolerance strategy. That means a tough and comprehensive approach that both cracks down on gang members and ends the cycles that have created generations of gang activity,” Harris wrote.
Smart on Crime proposes a three-pronged approach to addressing criminal gangs:
- Employ “more intense, coordinated, and sophisticated law enforcement efforts to apprehend, prosecute and disrupt” gang activity;
- Identify strategies to “prevent the entry of young, vulnerable individuals into gangs” as well as enlist communities victimized by gangs in the cause for fighting them; and,
- Focus “more strategically” on the re-entry of gang members from jail or prison as an opportunity to “break their criminal bonds and redirect their activities….”
Harris understood that when it came to organized gangs, cutting off the head was generally ineffective, and that targeted approaches were needed. She noted gangs’ use of technology, weapons and “sophisticated, coordinated networks,” and she stressed the need for law enforcement to “beef up its arsenal of Smart tools” such as networked databases and “shot spotting” equipment to triangulate the source of gunfire.
Harris realized that “gangs and guns are inseparable,” and she supported re-enactment of the federal assault weapons ban. Noting that in California “we now see teens carrying assault weapons, such as AK47s,” Harris observed that government “can preserve an individual’s right to legally own a gun, while enacting reasonable regulations on weapons of war” that “are being used to kill innocent children and police officers.”
One successful program received the barest mention in Smart on Crime. Harris related an anecdote about a 2006 meeting with community leaders to discuss a shocking gang-related shooting committed at a community playground, and the reticence of eyewitnesses. “Every successful prosecution of a gang member starts with at least one witness who has the courage to come forward and testify,” she wrote. Harris briefly touched on California’s Witness Relocation and Assistance Program, which she claimed had a “nearly 90 percent conviction rate for gang cases where witnesses were relocated for their safety.” This amazing statistic indicates genuine success, but this program received no further discussion in Smart on Crime. Maybe it was too costly to fit Harris’ “Smart” theme.
Another interesting program Harris mentioned was San Francisco’s Community Response Network, with staffers driving burgundy vans and wearing burgundy jackets: “CRNs coordinate systematic gang-prevention strategies across multiple community organizations, and they provide vans and other support to community organizers already working in troubled neighborhoods.” CRS teams did “proactive outreach” to young people at risk. “If they pick up intelligence about gang activity brewing,” Harris wrote, CRS vans “will literally pick up kids and take them home” or to another safe place to ride out the violence. “And when there is an assault or homicide,” Harris wrote, CRS volunteers “appear on the scene as quickly as possible“ to “de-escalate” the emotions of the crowd.
Like the Witness Relocation and Assistance Program, CRN was successful but costly. According to a 2006 article from the Bay City News Service, CRN first began in San Francisco’s Mission district in 2003, and the city sought to expand it to Bayview and other neighborhoods in 2006 after receiving nearly $500,000 in In federal funding from the U.S. Department of Justice, augmenting the $1 million the city was spending annually.
Angela Hokanson. “Feds to fund San Francisco violence prevention program.” Bay City News Service, 12 April 2006.
(In 2014 the non-governmental organization that administered the CRN program replaced core staff and the program was reorganized under the San Francisco Mayor’s Office as the Street Violence Response Program. See “Team of youths who worked to stop violence axed with little explanation.”
San Francisco Examiner, 27 July 2014.)
Although Harris talked the talk of a tough-on-crime prosecutor with a work-smarter-not-harder philosophy, her strategies were neither comprehensive nor innovative. For example, seeking a “concrete, immediate plan” to prevent a young person touched by gang violence at school from becoming ensnared in the gang lifestyle, Harris offered suggestions such as transferring to a different school or changing the route to school. But Harris failed to consider addressing the gang presence within the school system itself. How does a self-professed “no tolerance” prosecutor fail to address gang violence within the public school system?
Overall, Smart on Crime captures Kamala Harris’ approach to criminal justice as pedestrian — long on platitudes but short on ideas.
Kamala Harris with Joan O’C. Hamiliton.
Smart on Crime: A Career Prosecutor’s Plan to Make Us Safer. Chronicle Books, 2010.
Legal observer. Independent. Unaffiliated.#UnipartyBorderCrisis#MaRICOpa #Venezuela#HR552
