Kamala Harris admits her own California truancy law was a failure

Kamala Harris.
(Image credit: Mason Trinca/Getty Images)

Sen. Kamala Harris (D-Calif.) has received some retroactive criticism about her tenure as a California prosecutor — mainly that she was too tough on crime. Harris is now considered a criminal justice reformer and, as she launches her 2020 Democratic presidential, she has continued to distance herself from that aspect of her previous career.

She has also been scrutinized for championing a 2011 California truancy law when she was California's attorney general. The law ultimately punished parents with jail time if their children missed too much school.

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Tim O'Donnell

Tim is a staff writer at The Week and has contributed to Bedford and Bowery and The New York Transatlantic. He is a graduate of Occidental College and NYU's journalism school. Tim enjoys writing about baseball, Europe, and extinct megafauna. He lives in New York City.