(WASHINGTON) — Both former President Donald Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris have extensive records when it comes to criminal justice policy – records that are sometimes completely opposed to one another, and at other times are aligned.
As Trump – who has a criminal record of his own, having been convicted on 34 felony counts – prepares to face off in the general election against Harris, who is a former prosecutor, district attorney and attorney general, their past actions on criminal justice have come into the spotlight.
Here’s a look at some of the candidates’ policy records on crime, the death penalty, policing, and prison reform:
Recidivism
In 2005, as the district attorney for San Francisco, Harris launched “Back on Track,” a reentry initiative aimed at reducing recidivism among young, low-level, first-time felony drug-trafficking defendants.
Candidates between the ages of 18 and 30 who first complete six weeks of community service and then plead guilty to their charges are eligible to participate in the program, during which their sentencing is deferred until they complete a 12 to 18-month supervised “individualized personal responsibility plan” that includes “concrete achievements in employment, education, parenting, and child support,” among other mandates. The program reported that fewer than 10% of the program graduates reoffended after being released, compared to a 53% recidivism rate for California drug offenders within two years of release from incarceration.
The Biden-Harris administration also implemented a new Small Business Administration rule that removed loan eligibility restrictions based on a person’s criminal record.
“Making this available, reducing and eliminating that restriction is going to mean a lot in terms of second chances and the opportunity for people to excel,” Harris said of the program earlier this year.
In 2018, Trump signed a bipartisan bill into law similarly aimed at supporting recidivism reduction programs – a bill Harris voted for as a senator.
The First Step Act (FSA) called for the development of risk and needs assessment programs to reduce recidivism, and required the Bureau of Prisons to help incarcerated people access federal and state benefits, obtain identification, and more. Under the act, incarcerated people could earn time credit for participating in recidivism reduction programming and other activities, which could be applied toward early release.
According to the Council on Criminal Justice, recidivism is estimated to be 37% lower among FSA releases when compared to “similarly situated pre-FSA releases.”
Death penalty
Trump has consistently been pro-death penalty. Federal executions began under the Trump administration in 2020 for the first time in roughly 17 years, according to the Death Penalty Information Center (DPIC).
In 2020, the federal government completed 13 federal executions in the final months of the Trump presidency, according to the DPIC.
In 1989, prior to his time in office, Trump called for the return of the death penalty in a series of ads amid the case of five Black and brown boys then known as the “Central Park Five” who were convicted of assaulting and raping a woman in New York City.
Trump took out full-page ads in local newspapers within two weeks after the April 19, 1989 attack, calling to “Bring back the death penalty. Bring back our police!” However, the ads never explicitly mentioned the five boys, who were incarcerated for years before they were exonerated after another man confessed to the crime.
Harris has been consistent in her stance against the death penalty: “My entire career I have been opposed – personally opposed – to the death penalty,” Harris said in an August 2019 debate. “And that has never changed.”
However, some have criticized Harris for decisions regarding several death penalty-related cases.
For example, Harris declined to take up the case of convicted murderer Kevin Cooper, who was sentenced to death for a quadruple homicide in California in 1983 and is currently awaiting execution. His team had asked the state for additional DNA testing that they maintained could have exonerated him.
Harris has since changed her views on Cooper’s request, later telling The New York Times “I feel awful about this.”
Additionally, U.S. District Court Judge Cormac J. Carney overturned the death sentence of Ernest Dewayne Jones in 2014, ruling that the nearly 20 years he spent waiting for execution on death row was a form of cruel and unusual punishment, and so the death penalty was unconstitutional.
As the state’s attorney general, Harris appealed the ruling, arguing that the court’s decision “is not supported by the law, and it undermines important protections that our courts provide to defendants.” Carney’s ruling was overturned on appeal the following year.
Prison policy
Under the Trump administration, then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions in 2017 rescinded an Obama-era initiative to phase out private prisons. Sessions then began distributing contracts for new privately-run detention centers.
In January 2021, the Biden-Harris administration ordered the Department of Justice not to renew contracts for privately-operated criminal detention centers. In December 2022, the Bureau of Prisons (BOP) ended all contracts with privately owned prisons and transferred federal inmates who had been incarcerated in them to BOP-operated prisons.
Pardons and commutations
The Trump administration commuted the sentences of more than 90 individuals and granted pardons to more than 140 people, according to the DOJ. The Biden-Harris administration has so far commuted the sentences of more than 120 individuals and granted pardons to 25 people, according to the DOJ.
The plan ahead
Though the Harris campaign hasn’t yet released the vice president’s official 2024 platform, she previously has supported legalizing marijuana at the federal level, ending solitary confinement, embracing cash bail reform, ending federal mandatory minimum sentences for drug offenders, and furthering rehabilitative services for the incarcerated. She has also supported the Justice in Policing Act, which would limit “unnecessary” use of force and no-knock warrants, limit qualified immunity for police officers, and increase accountability for law enforcement misconduct.
The Trump administration’s plan, according to his official campaign website, states that he plans to increase funding to hire and retrain police officers, strengthen qualified immunity and other “protections” for police officers, increase penalties for assaults on law enforcement, and “surge federal prosecutors and the National Guard into high-crime communities.”
ABC News’ Allison Pecorin contributed to this report.
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