Alec Karakatsanis Profile picture
Jun 8, 2021 6 tweets 1 min read Read on X
A few thoughts about "crime." The concept of “crime” is created and manipulated by people who have power. Throughout U.S. history, powerful people have defined “crime” in ways that benefit wealthy people and white people. (1)
For example, cocaine, marijuana, and opium were each made illegal through specific political campaigns in order to give police more discretion to target specific racial minorities. (2)
It is illegal for poor people to wager over dice in the streets but legal for wealthy people to wager on the global price of wheat, the value of international currencies, or mortgage securities. (3)
And even within categories of acts that are classified as “crimes,” powerful people decide where to look for those acts, when to look for them, and which ones to ignore and which to document. "Law enforcement" only enforces *some* laws against *some* people. (4)
Students at universities frequently violate underage drinking, drug, and assault laws without punishment while Black people who live down the street are surveilled, searched, arrested, beaten, jailed, and rendered homeless, jobless, and traumatized for similar behavior. (5)
A schoolyard fight at a wealthy private school may mean a call to parents but the same fight at a school filled with poor children is recorded as a “crime” and prosecuted, ending with a child kept in a cage away from her family. The entire system is filled with such examples. (6)

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More from @equalityAlec

Sep 16
THREAD. One persistent form of propaganda is the refusal of corporate media to report critical context about judges when it reports on legal cases. Today's reporting on the TikTok case is a good example.
The entire New York Times article on the TikTok case is based on the supposed skepticism of two federal judges to TikTok's arguments, but the paper omits they are two of the most right-wing judges in the appellate judiciary, appointed by Trump and Reagan. nytimes.com/2024/09/16/tec…
The paper hides the political backgrounds and prior controversial positions and rulings of the two judges. It's as if "the law" is something neutral, that it doesn't matter who the judges are or who appoints them, that this is not a space where power is contested, etc.
Read 5 tweets
Sep 11
THREAD. A brief story about California judges openly refusing to comply with the law tells you a lot of what you need to know about "the rule of law" in the United States.
Over the last few years, there have been three (3) major court rulings--two federal courts and a state court--finding the cash bail practices in San Francisco, Los Angeles, and Sacramento unconstitutional. A fourth case, from California Supreme Court, upheld the same principles.
The court cases all said something simple: it's unconstitutional to jail people away from their families after arrest solely because their families cannot access a cash payment for money bail. (Only U.S. and Philippines have for-profit bail industry.)
Read 13 tweets
Sep 8
THREAD. "Centrist" parties in Western countries almost always prefer the far right to the moderate left. Given the choice between fascists and a party who wants to provide universal healthcare, housing, and and wealth tax they will pick the former.
The importance of this truth cannot be overstated. It explains a great deal of the official behavior of the Democratic Party. And hiding allegiance to core tenets of the far right with a facade of liberal rhetoric is one of the chief goals of neoliberal propaganda.
To take just three of many examples, this is why mainstream Democrats embrace right-wing mythology/propaganda on immigration, crime, and health care--despite overwhelming research that it is both a bad electoral strategy for them and hinders progressive outcomes even if they win.
Read 9 tweets
Aug 26
The events described in this article are the kinds of things people experience under fascism. The Texas Attorney General's conduct reflects a complete breakdown in democratic institutions.


Image
Image
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The failure of the Department of Justice and the judiciary to prevent authoritarian abuse like this should be an alarming moment for the legal profession. It's the kind of thing that should be front-page news in every paper and emergency conversations in every law class.
Federal "law enforcement" officials are behaving as if this is not an urgent situation. Instead of devoting resources to investigating illegal authoritarian abuse, federal resources in the state are mostly doubling down to help Texas officials fearmonger about the border.
Read 10 tweets
Aug 20
THREAD. The Democratic Party platform presents such a profound crisis if we have any hope of avoiding fascism.
Kamala Harris and other Democrats would essentially only need to say that they will condition aid to Israel on compliance with international law (i.e. follow existing U.S. law on weapons). The refusal to say something so simple presents a point of no return, for a few reasons.
Here is an image of everywhere bombed in Gaza, mostly with U.S. bombs. 100,000s have been killed by conservative estimates in medical journals. The entire infrastructure (schools, hospitals, water, history, etc) destroyed, and many thousands kidnapped, raped, tortured, maimed. Image
Read 13 tweets
Jul 26
THREAD. A few years ago, we were worried about the hidden epidemic of prosecutor misconduct. Why do so many prosecutors break the law? Why does nothing happen to them? Why does it stay secret? So, we tried to do something. What we found was more shocking than we imagined.
We worked with a group of the country's leading law professors to file ethics complaints against prosecutors in cases where either judges or their own prosecutor offices had already found them to have broken the law. We filed FIFTY of these complaints in New York alone.
A prosecutor breaking the law in a criminal prosecution--which can result in wrongful incarceration and family separation for years--is among the most serious violation of the code of ethics to which lawyers are bound. Ethics boards can discipline them to protect people.
Read 7 tweets

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