Kamala Harris Understands Criminal Justice at a Very Deep Level
by Nancy LeTourneau, Washington Monthly

Since I support Kamala, I really liked this column.

But if we’re actually concerned about public safety, that means doing whatever we can to stop a crime from happening in the first place. Furthermore, preventing crime means paying attention to children who have experienced trauma. In our patriarchal culture, those issues have been marginalized—particularly as the kind of thing only women care about. To the extent that Harris is right, perhaps it is not a coincidence that women like she, Janet Reno, and Marion Wright Edelman have been the ones to champion the cause of children in an effort to prevent crime.

Harris has taken a lot of heat for her history as a prosecutor. But what she demonstrates in these clips is that she understands criminal justice at an incredibly deep level. As Jeniffer Rubin notes, contrary to what many have suggested, this is an area where Harris leads the pack. Being unburdened by the need to appear “tough,” she is able to articulate how we can be smart on crime.