Amy Klobuchar wants to be the next president of the United States. But like fellow Democratic candidate Kamala Harris before her, and perhaps Joe Biden in the future, she’s increasingly facing scrutiny from progressives over one part of her record: criminal justice.

Klobuchar, who’s currently a US senator from Minnesota, was previously a prosecutor for Hennepin County, Minnesota, which is home to Minneapolis and more than 1 million people. In her time as prosecutor from 1999 to 2007, she embraced “tough on crime” policies — pursuing harsher prison sentences against nonviolent offenders, such as graffiti taggers and drug dealers, and calling for changes to the law that would allow even longer prison sentences, particularly against repeat offenders.

Much of this reflected the politics of the time. From the 1980s and to the late 2000s, it was pretty common for Democrats to join in — and even compete — with Republicans to look as “tough” as possible on criminal justice issues. As Hennepin County attorney in the middle of that era, Klobuchar largely fit into that mold.

“As a prosecutor, Klobuchar was not the worst or the most callous toward the plight of those prosecuted by her office, and at the time, her methods were not seen as extreme,” Sarah Lustbader, a lawyer and writer for the Appeal, recently wrote. “But she ramped up incarceration in ways that were wrongheaded and cruel.”

Since then, the Democratic Party has shifted to the left — calling for reforms to end mass incarceration, the war on drugs, and punitive criminal justice policies in general.

Harris, in her own presidential run, represents that shift: Like Klobuchar, she worked in law enforcement during the 1990s and 2000s — and some parts of her record do look, today, like they were “tough on crime,” even if they were normal back then. But Harris, in recent years, has become a champion of criminal justice reform, and she’s acknowledged some regrets for some of her past at campaign stops.

Klobuchar hasn’t apologized for her record. In her campaign announcement speech, she highlighted her work as a prosecutor, saying that “I always believe in doing my job without fear or favor. … And that means not only convicting the guilty but protecting the innocent.”

Asked about her prosecutor record, Klobuchar’s office said that she pushed for some reforms and took on cases, like the prosecution of baseball Hall of Famer Kirby Puckett for an alleged sexual assault, that would draw the attention of the #MeToo movement today.

But there’s a real difference between Klobuchar and some of her Democratic primary opponents: She has never positioned herself as a criminal justice reform champion. Her campaign policy proposals so far focus on other issues, like drug prices, climate change, and rural broadband. And her overall campaign frames her as the moderate in the race. While it may irk criminal justice progressives, going after drug dealers and repeat offenders isn’t exactly unpopular in American politics. The question is if it proves unpopular enough in the Democratic primary to become a big issue for Klobuchar.

Klobuchar was a “tough on crime” prosecutor

As a local prosecutor, Klobuchar ran on “tough on crime” policies and enforced them once in office. The Star Tribune, a newspaper in Minnesota, throughout the 1990s and 2000s highlighted her “tough-on-crime platform,” her “police-have-endorsed-me, law-and-order campaign,” and her prosecution of “‘small’ crimes.’” Klobuchar herself emphasized in a brief essay that she intends to “put repeat and violent offenders behind bars” and “hold judges accountable for sentences” — demonstrating her goal to pursue the harshest penalties for crimes possible under the law.

The concern for criminal justice reformers is that these kinds of policies have helped drive mass incarceration and the war on drugs, both of which have disproportionately impacted racial minorities.

Some examples of the policies Klobuchar implemented as a prosecutor:

Much of this was largely reflective of the times. Before Klobuchar left law enforcement in 2007, the criminal justice reform movement we know of today hadn’t really taken off. It was popular to be “tough on crime.”

For example, John Kerry, the 2004 Democratic candidate for president against George W. Bush, ran in part on hiring more cops, adopting a “zero tolerance” approach to gangs, and “cracking down on drug trafficking.” Crime wasn’t a major issue in the 2004 presidential election, but Kerry’s platform was the legacy of the 1980s and ’90s, when Republicans and Democrats — including President Bill Clinton — competed to see who could be “tougher.”

“She was a prosecutor when getting elected as a prosecutor required ‘tough on crime’ rhetoric and policies,” Mark Haase, who in 2018 unsuccessfully ran for Hennepin County attorney on a reform platform, told me. “It was the politics of criminal justice at the time, but there was also a widely held belief that those policies would ultimately make us all safer. Thankfully, that thinking is changing.”

Klobuchar embraced reforms in some areas

Klobuchar did pursue some reforms. For example, she ran on a community prosecution model that put prosecutors in specific neighborhoods so they could build better ties with the community.

Barry Scheck, a co-founder of the Innocence Project, said Klobuchar was also an early ally of the innocence movement, which pushed for the use of DNA testing and other new technologies to get innocent people out of prison. Scheck acknowledged that Klobuchar, like other prosecutors at the time, fit the mold of “tough on crime” in many ways, but she was also uniquely supportive of efforts to improve eyewitness identification and recording police interviews — two crucial causes for the Innocence Project at the time.

“It was very important to us to have prosecutors who would support these two reforms,” he told me. “Amy Klobuchar was a very strong proponent, knew the details, knew how to do it, and even contributed in helping with field experiments and publications.”

Klobuchar’s office also pointed to data showing that the black and Latin jail populations in Hennepin County fell while Klobuchar was a prosecutor, and that the overall jail population stayed roughly flat. But the Washington Post questioned the accuracy of the data, pointing to discrepancies in how the data was reported starting in 2001.

And the overall prison population for Hennepin County — which reflects on Klobuchar’s prosecutions — grew, although that seemed to largely reflect state and, to a lesser degree, national trends at the time.

Since leaving law enforcement, Klobuchar has taken some steps toward criminal justice reform. She voted for the First Step Act, a widely supported reform measure that President Trump signed into law. She acknowledged on Meet the Press last year “that there is racism in the [criminal justice] system that needs to be fixed.”

But she hasn’t really focused much on criminal justice issues as a senator, instead dedicating her time to issues ranging from big tech to tax-advantaged savings accounts for educational costs. She gave criminal justice reform only a brief mention in her presidential campaign announcement speech, claiming that — contrary to the evidence — she’s always supported it.

Klobuchar’s record hasn’t come up much in the campaign so far

Despite her record, Klobuchar hasn’t faced as many questions about her record as the other former prosecutor in the presidential race, Kamala Harris.

This was most prominent in recent CNN town halls. In one of the more pointed moments of Harris’s event, she was asked to answer for her criminal justice record and explain how she reconciles her past with the reform positions she holds today. By contrast, Klobuchar wasn’t asked in her town hall about criminal justice reform, even as she repeatedly brought up her past as a prosecutor (albeit in positive terms).

Lara Bazelon, an associate professor at the University of San Francisco School of Law who recently wrote a New York Times op-ed critical of Harris’s record, argued that this reflects how each candidate has described her time as a prosecutor.

“Unlike Harris, Klobuchar is not claiming that she was a ‘progressive prosecutor’ — at least not yet,” Bazelon told me. “It was that claim by Harris, in her recent best-selling memoir, that riled many criminal justice reform advocates,” particularly those in California who are more familiar with Harris’s record.

Bazelon added, “Klobuchar was a big supporter of many policies that contributed to the problem of mass incarceration, and my guess is that she will have to answer for her record once the scrutiny on her candidacy intensifies.”

It remains unclear just how big of an issue this will be for Klobuchar. Various polls, including one from Vox and Morning Consult, have found that the majority of Democrats support at least some criminal justice reform efforts. But other surveys, like Gallup’s, have also found that criminal justice issues aren’t a top-tier issue for voters — falling behind, in recent times, concerns about the government and poor leadership, immigration, the economy, and race relations.

Klobuchar is also running a campaign that is deliberately more moderate than her primary competition, which has largely run to the left on issues like health care, global warming, and higher education. More moderate voters are less likely to prioritize or back criminal justice reform efforts than liberals, so the voters Klobuchar is seeking to win over may not really be offended by her record as prosecutor.

Still, her record is potentially bad news for criminal justice reformers. A constant worry in the criminal justice reform space is what would happen if, say, the crime rate started to rise once again. If that were to happen, there could be pressure on lawmakers — and it’d at least be easier for them — to go back to “tough on crime” views, framing more aggressive policing and higher incarceration rates in a favorable way.

Given that the central progressive claim is that these policies are racist and, based on the research, ineffective for fighting crime in the first place, any potential for backsliding in this area once it becomes politically convenient is very alarming.

The concern, then, is what would happen if crime started to rise under President Klobuchar: Would she fall back on her old “tough on crime” instincts, calling for harsh prison sentences even for low-level offenses?

That’s why some reformers are calling on Klobuchar to own up to — and apologize for — her record. Haase, who ran for Hennepin County attorney last year, said that he would like to see three things from Klobuchar: “genuine recognition of the problems with our justice system,” “acknowledgment of her own role in creating the system we have today,” and “strong support for clear criminal justice reform policies.” Without all that, he added, “as a criminal justice reformer, I can’t even begin to consider supporting her for president.”

But, again, maybe the criminal justice reformer’s vote doesn’t matter much for Klobuchar. She may see another path to the White House.