Attorney General Kamala D. Harris

On January 3, 2011, Kamala D. Harris was sworn in as the 32nd Attorney General of the State of California. Attorney General Harris told Californians in her inaugural address that she will seek innovative approaches to tackling the state's toughest problems.

As chief law enforcement officer for the state, Attorney General Harris has focused on combating transnational gangs that are trafficking guns, drugs, and human beings through the state. She has travelled to every region of California to further collaboration with local law enforcement and committed resources to increase the adoption of technology and data-driven policing in order to improve efficiency in investigations and prosecutions. Attorney General Harris has long advocated the reduction of California's recidivism rate, which is the nation's highest.

As chief lawyer for the people of California, Attorney General Harris has led a response to the mortgage and foreclosure crisis hurting the state. She secured $18 billion for California homeowners from the nation's banks, while also expanding prosecutions of mortgage-related fraud and crime and introducing the California Homeowner Bill of Rights to bring justice and transparency to the mortgage process. Attorney General Harris has fought to protect consumers from privacy violations, to preserve the state's natural resources, to ensure marriage equality for all Californians, and to defend the Affordable Care Act.

Attorney General Harris has worked her entire career as a prosecutor and served two terms as District Attorney of San Francisco. First elected in 2003, she was overwhelmingly re-elected to a second term in November 2007.

As District Attorney, Attorney General Harris focused intensively on fighting violent crime. She increased conviction rates for serious and violent offenses, expanded services to victims of crime and their families, created new prosecution divisions focused on child assault, public integrity and environmental crimes, and launched innovative recidivism reduction initiatives to prevent re-offending. During her tenure, the San Francisco District Attorney's Office more than doubled its trial conviction rate for gun felonies to 90 percent and the office's overall felony conviction rate was at its highest point in 15 years. Under her leadership, the office sent 50 percent more serious and violent offenders to prison, put more than 220 gang members behind bars and convicted more than 1,200 domestic violence offenders.

Attorney General Harris attended the University of California Hastings College of the Law. She began her career as a prosecutor in the Alameda County District Attorney's Office, where she specialized in prosecuting child sexual assault cases. In 1998, she was recruited to the San Francisco District Attorney's Office, where she led the Career Criminals Unit. She also served as the head of the San Francisco City Attorney's Division on Families and Children.

Born and raised in the East Bay, Attorney General Harris is the daughter of Dr. Shyamala Harris, a breast cancer specialist who traveled to the United States from India to pursue her graduate studies at UC Berkeley. After attending public schools, Attorney General Harris' strong commitment to justice and public service led her to Howard University, America's oldest historically black university, from which she received an honorary doctorate of laws.

Attorney General Kamala (KA-ma-la) D. Harris is the author of the book Smart on Crime: A Career Prosecutor's Plan to Make Us Safer.