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Alec Karakatsanis Profile picture
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3 Feb, 5 tweets, 1 min read
THREAD: In 135 years of US history since 1886, scholars have been unable to find a single reported instance in which any court anywhere in the US dismissed a criminal case because of racial bias in prosecution. (1)
In DC, where I live, prosecutors choose to imprison Black people at 19 times the rate of white people. (2) yalelawjournal.org/forum/the-puni…
The US now imprisons Black people at 6 times the rate of South Africa at the height of Apartheid. (3)
Everyone who works in the system knows that race determines many prosecutor decisions, like whether to charge a case, what plea to offer, whether to prosecute a child as an adult, what kind of sentence to seek, etc... And yet the system never acknowledges this bias. (4)
Could the legal bureaucracy's indifference to racial disparities--and its celebration of them as "justice" and "law enforcement"--mean that racial disparities are actually the intended results of the bureaucracy?

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More from @equalityAlec

Alec Karakatsanis Profile picture
4 Feb
thread: late last night, our team found another 17-year-old child trapped in the adult jail in houston because he can't pay $1,000 cash. he's been there for almost two months, forgotten. he was arrested after missing court because he was given the wrong date on his paperwork.
the child is one of about 9,000 people trapped inside the harris countty jail as the virus surges. most of them are trapped there because they can't pay cash to be home with their families while they are presumed innocent.
our team is working hard with people on the ground to get him out of jail, and i will keep you posted.
Read 4 tweets
Alec Karakatsanis Profile picture
2 Feb
THREAD: Today's $61.7 million settlement against Amazon tells you a lot about how the legal system really works. (1) ftc.gov/news-events/pr…
In most contexts, when someone steals money from people, it's called "theft" or "fraud." But when large corporations do it to thousands of people, the system treats it as a civil case to be "settled." No one is prosecuted, no one is caged and separated from their family. (2)
Wage theft from low-income workers by rich corporations costs over $50 billion per year. That's 3.5 times more than all robberies, burglaries, larcenies, and motor vehicle thefts COMBINED. Yet police and prosecutors choose not to treat wage theft as a "crime." (3)
Read 5 tweets
Alec Karakatsanis Profile picture
30 Jan
THREAD: Democrats are now demanding an increase to the Capitol Police force budget. A few things you might not know about the Capitol Police: (1)
Capitol Police already have a $515 million dollar budget. This is more than 10% of the entire budget for the whole Legislative Branch of the US government. (2)
52% of their time is spent on traffic charges, and 14% of their arrests are minor drug arrests. They mostly arrest very poor people in the surrounding DC community (DC also has the largest racial disparity in arrests of any US jurisdiction). (3) firstbranchforecast.com/2021/01/06/a-p…
Read 4 tweets
Alec Karakatsanis Profile picture
29 Jan
THREAD: When politicians talk "reform" of racist systems, remember the story of how New York politicians used "reform" after Kalief's death to perpetuate violence against Black children. (1) newyorker.com/magazine/2014/…
Kalief committed suicide after three years of pretrial detention at Rikers, falsely accused of stealing another child's backpack. He spent 18 months in solitary confinement. (2)
His mother Venida died shortly afterward--died from a broken heart. (3) theroot.com/mom-of-kalief-…
Read 7 tweets
Alec Karakatsanis Profile picture
28 Jan
THREAD: This video is the daily churn of injustice. A Black man arrested for "drinking beer in a parking lot" is jailed because he cannot pay $5,000 cash. He begs for release, judge says: "Thank you, go with the deputy." (1)
This isn't an issue of "good cops" or "bad cops." This video right here is most of what police do. There are more arrests each year in the US for marijuana possession than all of what police call "violent crime" combined. (2)
96% of all police time is spent on what they call "non-violent" crime. (3)
Read 4 tweets
Alec Karakatsanis Profile picture
28 Jan
THREAD: This is another very bad NYT article by the metro desk. Almost everything in here is worth criticizing, include the idea to write the story. But a few high-level thoughts: (1) nytimes.com/2021/01/27/nyr…
The article says there has been a "major" culture shift in Queens. Most good propaganda doesn't involve false statements--it's normative claims like this, reported as a fact, that try to set the boundaries for the reader's imagination of what's possible. (2)
The NYT makes the editorial *choice* to call her a "major" reformer, even though the paper knows that the office is still a mass incarceration machine that has barely changed at all. Very little has changed in any objective analysis of that office. (3)
Read 10 tweets

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