Sen. Kamala Har­ris (D‑Calif.) released a new auto­bi­og­ra­phy in Jan­u­ary, The Truths We Hold: An Amer­i­can Jour­ney, to coin­cide with her pres­i­den­tial bid. It opens with an awestruck account of her first day as a sum­mer intern with the Alame­da Coun­ty Dis­trict Attor­ney’s Office. That expe­ri­ence dur­ing her final year of law school con­firmed her desire to be a pros­e­cu­tor and pro­pelled her suc­cess­ful cam­paigns to become San Francisco’s dis­trict attor­ney and then California’s attor­ney general.

The sad reality is that Harris is in step with a troubling Washington consensus on criminal justice reform.

Har­ris writes of striv­ing to be a ​“pro­gres­sive pros­e­cu­tor,” but her vision is com­prised of lit­tle more than gauzy invo­ca­tions to wield the pow­ers of her office ​“with a sense of fair­ness, per­spec­tive and expe­ri­ence,” to ​“hold seri­ous crim­i­nals account­able,” to fos­ter ​“safe com­mu­ni­ties” through crime pre­ven­tion, and to run a ​“pro­fes­sion­al oper­a­tion.” Har­ris fre­quent­ly men­tions her will­ing­ness to fight the good fight, to bring it on, but the bat­tle­field she por­trays is large­ly devoid of spe­cif­ic polit­i­cal inter­ests, trade-offs and oppo­nents (except for pri­mor­dial sins such as racism, sex­ism, homo­pho­bia and, of course, the bogey­man of Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump).

When it comes to pol­i­cy, Har­ris sits foursquare in the Wash­ing­ton con­sen­sus that con­gealed around the much-her­ald­ed First Step Act of Decem­ber 2018. Instead of rein­ing in the carcer­al state, that con­sen­sus involves trim­ming around its edges at best and bol­ster­ing its long-term via­bil­i­ty at worst.

Now com­ing under nation­al scruti­ny with her pres­i­den­tial bid, Harris’s poor record has been hid­ing in plain sight for years in Cal­i­for­nia. That record, once one looks past her mul­ti­cul­tur­al com­ing of age sto­ry and her attempts at soar­ing rhetoric, is risk-adverse and main­stream — much like Barack Obama’s at a com­pa­ra­ble point in his polit­i­cal career. She has spent lit­tle polit­i­cal cap­i­tal to curb mass incar­cer­a­tion and, like Oba­ma, her biggest polit­i­cal risks have involved the tim­ing of her elec­toral deci­sions to chal­lenge estab­lish­ment politi­cians rather than wait her turn to run for high­er office.

When Har­ris was elect­ed dis­trict attor­ney of San Fran­cis­co in 2003, the prob­lem of mass incar­cer­a­tion was invis­i­ble to the wider pub­lic. To her cred­it, she chal­lenged the idea that pros­e­cu­tors should ​“incarcerat[e] peo­ple for as long as pos­si­ble, no mat­ter the crime, no mat­ter how much it costs to incar­cer­ate them, and despite the doc­u­ment­ed fact that our cur­rent prison sys­tem rarely pre­vents offend­ers from com­mit­ting new crimes when they come back out.” Ear­ly in her tenure, she took a coura­geous stand not to seek the death penal­ty in the case of a man accused of killing a police offi­cer, and her office was also less like­ly than many oth­er juris­dic­tions to deploy Cal­i­for­ni­a’s dra­con­ian three-strikes law.

These are ear­ly bright spots in what is oth­er­wise a trou­bling record. A judge exco­ri­at­ed her DA’s office for its ​“lev­els of indif­fer­ence” to defen­dants’ con­sti­tu­tion­al rights in its fail­ure to dis­close infor­ma­tion about a scan­dal in the crime lab’s drug analy­sis unit that led to the dis­missal of 700 cas­es. A tech­ni­cian had been skim­ming cocaine and tam­per­ing with evidence.

As attor­ney gen­er­al, Har­ris suc­cess­ful­ly cham­pi­oned leg­is­la­tion to crim­i­nal­ize tru­an­cy and pun­ish par­ents with fines and incar­cer­a­tion. She also sided with Gov. Jer­ry Brown to stymie imple­men­ta­tion of Brown v. Pla­ta, the most con­se­quen­tial pris­on­ers’ rights deci­sion in more than a gen­er­a­tion, by repeat­ed­ly return­ing the case to the low­er courts. The U.S. Supreme Court had declared that Cal­i­for­ni­a’s gross­ly over­crowd­ed pris­ons were uncon­sti­tu­tion­al and ordered the state to reduce its inmate pop­u­la­tion. Andrew Cohen of the Bren­nan Cen­ter for Jus­tice char­ac­ter­ized these attempts to ​“weasel out” of the Supreme Court’s rul­ing as ​“noth­ing short of contemptuous.”

In The Truths We Hold, Har­ris lauds implic­it bias train­ing as her weapon of choice to reduce police shoot­ings of peo­ple of col­or. There are much more effec­tive and proven mea­sures, like stricter use-of-force reg­u­la­tions for police depart­ments and man­dat­ed inde­pen­dent inves­ti­ga­tions of shoot­ings — but they are stri­dent­ly opposed by many police offi­cers and their unions, and Har­ris has not force­ful­ly advo­cat­ed them.

Har­ris has tak­en sim­i­lar­ly trou­bling posi­tions on many oth­er key crim­i­nal jus­tice issues, includ­ing the use of soli­tary con­fine­ment, civ­il asset for­fei­tures, the crim­i­nal­iza­tion of sex work, and puni­tive res­i­den­cy and oth­er mea­sures lev­eled on peo­ple con­vict­ed of sex offens­es. She resist­ed key efforts to mod­er­ate California’s three-strikes law. Har­ris peri­od­i­cal­ly has tout­ed her­self as a fierce oppo­nent of the cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment, but as attor­ney gen­er­al, she appealed a fed­er­al judge’s rul­ing that the state’s enforce­ment of the death penal­ty was uncon­sti­tu­tion­al. She con­tin­ued to come down on the side of the death penal­ty as the case made its way through the fed­er­al courts and took no pub­lic posi­tion on a 2012 bal­lot mea­sure to repeal cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment in California.

It’s easy to pile on Har­ris as a would-be reformer who is any­thing but. The sad real­i­ty is that she is in step with a trou­bling Wash­ing­ton con­sen­sus on crim­i­nal jus­tice reform. If there were any doubts, just look at the strange career of the First Step Act, which Trump signed into law in Decem­ber 2018 and CNN com­men­ta­tor Van Jones hailed as a ​“Christ­mas mir­a­cle.”

The final ver­sion of the bill includ­ed some mod­est sen­tenc­ing reforms that will like­ly result in the ear­ly release of a few thou­sand of the fed­er­al sys­tem’s 180,000 inmates; it will not affect the release dates of the 2 mil­lion peo­ple incar­cer­at­ed in state and local jails. The leg­is­la­tion also promis­es to expand the use of com­pas­sion­ate release for grave­ly ill fed­er­al pris­on­ers and improve the con­di­tions of con­fine­ment for oth­er fed­er­al pris­on­ers by, among oth­er things, pro­hibit­ing the shack­ling of preg­nant women and the soli­tary con­fine­ment of juveniles.

Leav­ing aside the sen­tenc­ing reforms, the Fed­er­al Bureau of Pris­ons already had the broad author­i­ty to imple­ment most of these changes through its admin­is­tra­tive pow­ers. Indeed, the shack­ling of preg­nant women has been pro­hib­it­ed in the fed­er­al sys­tem for about a decade.

The First Step Act was first intro­duced by Reps. Hakeem Jef­fries (D‑N.Y.), Bob Good­lat­te (R‑Va.) and Karen Bass (D‑Calif.) in May 2018 and received 16 bipar­ti­san cospon­sors, includ­ing Kei­th Elli­son (D‑Minn.) and Tul­si Gab­bard (D‑Hawaii). The Lead­er­ship Con­fer­ence on Civ­il and Human Rights wrote a scorch­ing response, signed by dozens of crim­i­nal jus­tice reform and civ­il rights orga­ni­za­tions, includ­ing the ACLU, urg­ing leg­is­la­tors to vote no due to sev­er­al ​“grave con­cerns,” includ­ing the act’s cen­ter­piece — a ​“risk and needs assess­ment” algo­rithm that risked ​“embed­ding deep racial and class bias” into ear­ly-release deci­sions. They also crit­i­cized the bill for fos­ter­ing the pri­va­ti­za­tion of the crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem and for fail­ing to appro­pri­ate any fund­ing for implementation.

Anoth­er con­cern was the bil­l’s focus on pro­vid­ing pro­gram­ming and ear­ly release mea­sures tar­get­ed at the ​“non, non, nons” — peo­ple con­vict­ed of non­vi­o­lent, non­se­ri­ous and non-sex­u­al offens­es. The leg­is­la­tion excludes a wide swath of peo­ple in fed­er­al prison who may have com­mit­ted seri­ous crimes but who no longer pose seri­ous threats to pub­lic safe­ty. There are dozens of exclu­sions, includ­ing peo­ple con­vict­ed of com­put­er fraud, fail­ure to reg­is­ter as a sex offend­er, and many cat­e­gories of assault and pos­ses­sion of a firearm.

Har­ris and Sen. Cory Book­er ini­tial­ly joined the oppo­si­tion to the bill. In Novem­ber 2018, how­ev­er, Book­er helped rein­tro­duce a revised ver­sion that includ­ed new (mod­est) sen­tenc­ing reforms. The Lead­er­ship Con­fer­ence and many oth­er advo­ca­cy groups (includ­ing the ACLU) did an about-face, endors­ing the revised leg­is­la­tion even though most of their ​“grave con­cerns” were still unaddressed.

The revised bill tweaked the pro­posed risk-assess­ment sys­tem but left its trou­bling fea­tures intact. The new fund­ing autho­rized — $75 mil­lion annu­al­ly for five years — was less than miniscule.

Once the Wash­ing­ton estab­lish­ment of civ­il rights and oth­er advo­ca­cy orga­ni­za­tions shift­ed posi­tions, the Democ­rats had plen­ty of cov­er to sign on. Need­ing to bur­nish their image as can-do leg­is­la­tors, pres­i­den­tial aspi­rants Har­ris, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I‑Vt.), Sen. Eliz­a­beth War­ren (D‑Mass.), Sen. Sher­rod Brown (D‑Ohio) and Sen. Kirsten Gilli­brand (D‑N.Y.) applaud­ed this sore­ly com­pro­mised leg­is­la­tion. All lament­ed its mod­esty but declared it — no sur­prise — a first step.

Some major crim­i­nal jus­tice reform advo­cates, includ­ing Patrisse Cul­lors, co-founder of Black Lives Mat­ter, remained out­spo­ken oppo­nents. In a pre­pared state­ment, JustLead­er­shi­pUSA, a lead­ing advo­ca­cy group for for­mer­ly incar­cer­at­ed peo­ple, denounced the mea­sure: ​“We must avoid fur­ther sit­u­a­tions like the First Step Act and any type of incre­men­tal reform that helps the few and sets up harm for the many. We could not endorse this bill because it con­tains what Michelle Alexan­der has apt­ly termed the Newest Jim Crow — harm­ful tech­nol­o­gy and an expan­sion of the carcer­al state that will dis­pro­por­tion­ate­ly impact Black and brown people’s free­dom.” Vivian D. Nixon, a lead­ing nation­al voice among for­mer­ly incar­cer­at­ed peo­ple, said in a state­ment, ​“It’s tempt­ing to sup­port this bill on the mer­its of its effort to improve the con­di­tions of con­fine­ment. But these improve­ments mean lit­tle if they come at the expense of free­dom for this and future generations.”

The hoopla sur­round­ing the Wash­ing­ton con­sen­sus that has brought togeth­er Democ­rats and the ACLU with the Koch broth­ers on the issue of crim­i­nal jus­tice reform is overblown. It has been self-serv­ing­ly pro­mot­ed, espe­cial­ly by the Kochs’ polit­i­cal and pub­lic pol­i­cy machine, as the one bright spot in an oth­er­wise dys­func­tion­al cap­i­tal. As the crim­i­nal jus­tice gaze was fixed on this alleged bipar­ti­san mir­a­cle, William Barr, a cham­pi­on of hard­line penal poli­cies when he was Pres­i­dent George H.W. Bush’s attor­ney gen­er­al, was poised to return as Pres­i­dent Trump’s next attor­ney general.

The hoopla also draws atten­tion away from the major advances toward reform hap­pen­ing at the local lev­el. A new gen­er­a­tion of pros­e­cu­tors is will­ing to take on the Fra­ter­nal Order of Police and the statewide asso­ci­a­tions of dis­trict attor­neys and sher­iffs — some of the biggest obsta­cles to real crim­i­nal jus­tice reform. And pow­er­ful local coali­tions are emerg­ing to make sure that those like Har­ris, who aspire to be ​“pro­gres­sive pros­e­cu­tors,” do not pull back once they are elect­ed to office.