She did something about the system. She defended it. On two occasions she opposed the release of people who had convictions overturned by demonstrating actual innocence to appellate courts on the basis of legal technicalities, in both cases her office argued that they had waited too long to file a petition to be released. Her office argued against the release of inmates eligible for parole after a federal court ruled that the extreme overcrowding in California prisons was cruel and unusual on the basis that releasing the prisoners would reduce prison labor.

She helped with a cover up of an employee at the state crime lab who falsified testing results. The truth came out after the employee was arrested for stealing drugs from the lab and hundreds of convictions were overturned. She defended a police detective that falsified a confession to coerce a defendant into accepting a plea deal. She opposed requiring police to use body worn cameras. She opposed legislation that would have required her office to review police shootings.

She consistently declined to investigate allegations of police and prosecutor misconduct including police shootings of unarmed people. Eventually she had to for the police, it got to the point that the justice department eventually stepped in to investigate an incident where a group of officers surrounded a mentally ill man with a steak knife and shot him 21 times after Harris refused to review the case. While she cooperated with the federal investigation into the police shooting, she backed the prosecutor who had his entire office removed from a case because of proven misconduct including hiding exonerating evidence.