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

Jul 7
THREAD. Something must be said about the New York Times. We are in the midst of a full-blown fascist takeover, and the NYT let one of its most dishonest reporters publish an article today full of misinformation arguing for massive new investments in police and surveillance.
The thesis of the article is that because American cops are so terrible at solving murder (and getting much much worse than they used to be), "experts" believe the U.S. must spend massively more money on hiring police and surveillance. Image
I have a chapter in my Copaganda book on how the news media cherry picks pro-police "experts"--a small group who are kind of like flat-earthers--and then tries to manufacture some kind of consensus. It's actually unbelievable when you lay it all out across outlets and articles.
Read 17 tweets
Jun 20
THREAD. As I visit London next week for the UK launch of my book Copaganda, I have to say publicly how outrageous the mainstream British media’s crime coverage is. It’s like they’ve studied the worst aspects of U.S. news culture while taking performance-enhancing drugs.
This may seem comical to U.S. news consumers who lived through the fake “retail theft” panic, but British press has worked itself into a frenzy in 2025 using the same playbook. Some of it is funny, but the effects will be devastating for British society. Look at BBC: Image
Here are some other recent examples from a smorgasbord of UK copaganda about low-level theft: “Broken Britain.” “Industrial-scale crime.” “Shoplifting crime wave." Image
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Read 16 tweets
Jun 18
THREAD. The New York Times editorial on the New York City Mayor race is shameful. A lot of people have criticized its cowardice for refusing to endorse, but I want to highlight something deeper and more disturbing.
One main theme of faux-intellectual neoliberal propaganda in recent years is that we tried progressive policies, and those policies failed. As I discuss in my Copaganda book with lots of funny/disturbing examples, this NYT lie is one of the most pernicious lies in modern media: Image
The story goes: lefty policies to make society more equal, free, and ecologically sustainable are naive. Now that we've tried them with terrible results, we have no choice but to boost repression to manage inequality we cannot solve and to help oligarchs make society less equal.
Read 11 tweets
Jun 15
THREAD: The assassinations in Minnesota highlight a dirty secret hardly ever mentioned in the news: U.S. has 1.1 million private police officers. There is an unprecedented footprint of privately organized violence that is doing all sorts of things most people have no idea about. Image
Many journalists and "experts" quoted in the news go out of their way in new stories to conceal the reach of the private security/policing industries, what interests are behind it, and what it means for the possibility of a democratic life.
In my Copaganda book, I tell the story of how pro-police scholars and journalists have worked to conceal from the public estimates of private police--from forces at universities like Harvard, to much of downtown Detroit, to DC metro, to smaller stuff like this shooter.
Read 5 tweets
Jun 9
Wait till you get to the answer! Image
"Yes." Image
"I had been wondering whether profiting from fascist kidnapping and mass torture/deportation/death was right or wrong, but this philosopher told me it was ok if I give money to the ACLU" is among the best things I've ever consumed in mainstream media.
Read 8 tweets
Jun 1
Few stories better capture modern policing than this one about a conspiracy of private corporate interests paying off-duty state troopers as part of a "shadow force" to cleanse downtown Nashville of homeless people using metal chains, cages, and violence. Image
It's great to see local news covering issues like this by reporter @JFinleyreports because it helps to expose the vast bulk of what police do: only 4% of their time is spent on "violent" crime, and much of it is done to make people money: wsmv.com/2025/05/29/sha…
But it's vital to understand this is not some egregious "bad apple" conspiracy particular to Tennessee or Nashville. It's important to understand that local policing looks like this in every large U.S. city, regardless of whether Democrats or Republicans are in control.
Read 5 tweets

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