The policy was part of her state and local record as a prosecutor that has led to criticism during her presidential campaign
By Chelsea Janes Chelsea Janes Reporter covering the 2020 presidential campaign Email Bio Follow April 17 at 7:12 PM Sen. Kamala D. Harris, the former California attorney general whose prosecutorial record is drawing criticism from some as overly harsh, expressed “regret” on Wednesday for a truancy program she implemented and said she would not support expanding nationally if she becomes president.
On Wednesday, speaking on the left-leaning podcast Pod Save America, Harris lamented what she called “unintended consequences” of the policy — in other words, that the policy was never intended to criminalize parents, just motivate them to ensure their children attended school — and distanced herself from the detentions that resulted from it.
When asked, Harris defends the policy by citing her rationale: She commissioned a study of homicide victims under 25 and found 90 percent of them were high school dropouts. She determined that habitually truant elementary school students were more likely to drop out of high school, so she designed a policy to get kids back to school.
As attorney general, Harris issued a 2013 report on truancy that suggested parents be “imprisoned for truancy violations in only the most extreme cases — it is both traumatic for children and families and costly for taxpayers.”
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