Since announcing her presidential bid, Sen. Kamala Harris, like any other candidate, is having her background as a public servant scrutinized.

From the jump, Harris tried to explain truancy law she helped pass while she was San Francisco’s district attorney. Now, the Democratic hopeful for the country’s top office is expressing regret.

During an interview with “Pod Save America” that aired Tuesday (April 16), Harris says it “was never the intention” to criminalize parents and described the California law as one with “unintended consequences.”

“I regret that that has happened and the thought that anything I did could have led to that,” she said. While parents weren’t sent to prison under her watch as San Fran’s DA, the law later spiraled – via an additional measure – into a crime punishable by imprisonment after she became California’s Attorney General in 2010.

The Democratic Party has seen itself shift left since the election of Donald Trump in 2016, widely embracing ideas like “Medicare for all,” reparations, and the abolishing of ICE, which were previously considered radical. Harris’ rather tough stint as a district attorney and later Attorney General has made some Democrats wary of how she’ll handle criminal justice reform as president.

In Tuesday’s interview, Harris expounded on her efforts to fix what she described as a “failing” education system by distinguishing between truancy and chronic truancy. She defended the laws she helped pass surrounding the issue by touting that school attendance increased by more than 30 percent.

“My concern was if we don’t take seriously the need that we as a society should have to ensure that our children are receiving the benefit of an education, we will pay the price later,” Harris said. “And those kids will pay the price.”

Kamala Harris says she would not support a law similar to the 2011 California measure that added jail time as a punishment for parents whose kids miss too many consecutive days of classes. She says that when she was San Fran’s DA, no parents were imprisoned.

“In other jurisdictions. I had no control over that,” she said. “When I was DA, we never sent a parent to jail.” However, people were incarcerated when she was Attorney General.