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Alec Karakatsanis Profile picture
@equalityAlec
Aug 4, 2021 • 26 tweets • 8 min read • Read on X
UPDATED THREAD. You're going to hear a lot about how cops need more resources because "crime is surging" in the next few months. It's propaganda, and here's how you can respond:
First, what constitutes a "crime" is determined by people in power who have a lot of money.
Second, cops manipulate crime stats for political reasons. Cops don't even count the *violent and sexual crimes that cops commit,* which would entirely reverse the crime stats in every city and state.
Third, police ignore most "crime." They only look for *some* crimes committed by *some* people in *some* places. A school fight in a poor neighborhood is recorded as a “crime,” but a fight in a wealthy private school is not. Read hundreds of examples here: yalelawjournal.org/forum/the-puni…
Fourth, police have incentives to focus on some “crimes” and not others. They make billions of $ in overtime for low-level arrests. This is one reason cops have ignored 100,000s of untested rape kits while making record drug arrests for decades. ilr.law.uiowa.edu/print/volume-9…
Fifth, police corruption in search of extra cash and weapons affects all of what cops do and what they tell us about what they do. For example, police take more property through civil forfeiture than all “property crimes” combined.
Sixth, only 4% of all cop time goes to what they call "violent crime." And cops are terrible at solving "violent crime." Overwhelming evidence establishes that cops and prisons actually increase future “crime.” So, cops are terrible at preventing harm. nytimes.com/2020/06/19/ups…
Seventh, what cops call “crime” is different from what causes harm. E.g., tobacco kills 480,000 people every year in the U.S, including 41,000 from second-hand smoke. These preventable deaths dwarf police-reported data on deaths from the drugs cops call “crime.”
Eighth, the same is true of water/air pollution and fraudulent home foreclosures, all of which cause huge death rates that kill far more people than what cops call homicides. nytimes.com/2009/09/13/us/…
Ninth, wage theft by employers isn't in crime stats b/c it is almost never investigated by cops, but it costs low-wage workers an estimated $50 billion/year, dwarfing the cost of all cop-reported robberies, burglaries, larcenies, and car thefts combined.
Tenth, did you know that rich banks make about as much in fraudulent “overdraft” fees as all of what police call “property crime” combined in the U.S.? Did you know that none of this makes it into police “property crime” statistics? prospect.org/economy/big-ba…
Eleventh, these are millions of yearly white-collar “crimes” by big corporations and the wealthy people who own them but police don’t put them in their crime stats. Read more here about why cops distort the concepts of "crime" and actual harm. currentaffairs.org/2020/08/why-cr…
Twelfth, people will say: but even if "crime" is politicized and even if "violent crime" is actually down in 2021, "shootings" are up. Well, gun sales are up 40% and we’re in a global pandemic mental health crisis. Murder is a problem but not one related to more cops!
Thirteenth, the initial 2021 trend of more shootings is especially accelerated in places that increased police funding, and almost no city decreased police funding significantly. See a few examples:
Fourteenth, almost all reporting about a “crime surge” uses low base rates so that percentage changes can appear high. An increase of 10 shootings to 12 shootings is reported as a 20% increase!
Fifteenth, media often focuses on month to month or year to year numbers, emphasizing different crimes at different times if one goes up, obscuring larger trends like this: we have among lowest murders in last 50 years, and other countries with fewer cops have way fewer murders.
Sixteenth, cops/media thus cherry-pick data. The result of this manipulation is one of the big scandals of our time: for decades the public has hugely overestimated crime rates: fivethirtyeight.com/features/many-…
Seventeenth, there is no evidence that cops/prisons reduce any "crime," especially that they reduce crime *relative to other alternatives.* Think about what could have been done to help people with the trillions of dollars spent on the War on Drugs:
Eighteenth, people telling you to give more cash to cops b/c of “crime” don’t count the *costs*: millions of arrests; millions of separated kids; millions of lost jobs, homes, medical appointments; tens of millions of police assaults; hundreds of millions of criminal records.
Nineteenth, those calling for more cash for cops don't tell you that the trillions of dollars spent on police/prisons has been used by cops for total surveillance and to infiltrate and crush every single movement for social justice in the past 100 years.
Twentieth, the idea of “soaring” crime after a few dozen more shootings w/o reporting how many people died from unstable housing, lack of access to healthcare, pollution, or malnutrition is how elites keep us focused on solutions of control and profit and not liberation.
Finally, not all human tragedy is preventable, but quite a lot of it is, and accepting copaganda on “crime” and police data about that concept as a proxy for holistic public safety is the original sin of most writing in this topic.
Read more @interruptcrim and fight back against propaganda that wealthy interests and cop unions are feeding to us. interruptingcriminalization.com/cops-dont-stop…
I just did the @CitationsPod podcast with @adamjohnsonNYC and @WideAsleepNima featuring the brilliant @tamaranopper on all of these issues. Take a listen:
I've just added to this thread the most important, most comprehensive meta study ever conducted on the topic, showing that incarceration on balance does not improve (but harms) public safety, even as that term is narrowly defined by police and prosecutors.

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More from @equalityAlec

Alec Karakatsanis Profile picture
Sep 6
THREAD. I don't know what there is left to say about the New York Times and Democrats, but documenting their support for fascism still feels important. If there's any chance to walk back from the fascist cliff, we must see why things like today's article are so dangerous. Image
The article today is premised on the idea that--while some Dems are uncomfortable with Trump deploying military to cities without consent--they want more federal resources (even military) to flood their cities for surveillance, police, prosecution, and prison. Image
As with any article, ask yourself: Why is this a news story? Who benefits from it being news, from how it's framed, from what info is included and what is ignored? Always look: who are sources quoted, and which perspectives are ignored? Take a look at the sources in order: Image
Read 14 tweets
Alec Karakatsanis Profile picture
Aug 29
THREAD. For over a decade, I've been working across the country to challenge unconstitutional cash bail. So, why is Trump trying to entrench it?
The for-profit cash bail industry exists only in U.S. and Philippines. Even though you're presumed innocent, you're stuck in a jail cell while you wait for your day in court if your family doesn't have cash to pay a private company to secure your release.
Basing bodily liberty on a person's access to cash destroys millions of lives. It makes us all less safe. It's unconstitutional. But it makes a lot of people a lot of money, and it gives huge leverage to prosecutors and police to force people to plead guilty in low-level cases.
Read 8 tweets
Alec Karakatsanis Profile picture
Aug 25
THREAD. Today's article by New York Times reporter Devlin Barrett is a good example of how bad journalism can normalize authoritarianism. Let's look at a particularly egregious example.
These two paragraphs tell you a lot about the failures of contemporary journalism. Among many problems here, and with the article generally, I will highlight two huge ones for now. Image
First, through its choice of sources, lack of skepticism, and failure to provide contrary evidence or context, the article suggests that not letting stormtroopers illegally search and brutalize ordinary people "could hamper crime-fighting efforts for years to come."
Read 13 tweets
Alec Karakatsanis Profile picture
Aug 13
THREAD. A subtle but pervasive propaganda technique is when the news adopts as the *actual* motive the *stated* motive of people in power. Image
Nobody with any knowledge or experience thinks Trump is in good faith taking over the DC police and mobilizing the military to “fight crime.” Indeed crime is at historic lows and “violent crime” is down 26% in DC from last year. So, why is the New York Times doing this?
Laundering the real reasons people in power do things by adopting their lies as assumed truth is among the most interesting and dangerous contemporary copaganda techniques. I devote almost entire chapter in the Copaganda book to it.
Read 6 tweets
Alec Karakatsanis Profile picture
Aug 11
THREAD. Today's orders by Trump federalizing D.C. police and deploying National Guard in D.C. in response to "out of control" crime are authoritarian. But I want to comment on something subtle lurking beneath the surface.
As with most media/politician talk about "crime," it is completely divorced from reality. D.C. crime is at historic lows. What police call "violent crime" is down 26% since last year. More broadly, it's been at multi-decade, historic lows for years. Image
So, how is this possible? What lays the groundwork for such ludicrous claims? The news media has been fear-mongering for years. Indeed, in my Copaganda book, I have a very interesting section about prominent Washington Post journalists using this same "out of control" language.
Read 9 tweets
Alec Karakatsanis Profile picture
Aug 1
THREAD. A recent poll shows that people in the United States suffer from mass delusion about crime. The results are alarming for Democrats. It should be a massive scandal for mainstream news, and it's a pillar of the authoritarian zeitgeist.
Only 9% of respondents correctly answered that murder rates in the U.S. have decreased a lot since 1990. today.yougov.com/topics/politic…Image
This is just simple "flat-earther" stuff. But it continues the broader fear-based delusion that has been gripping the population for years across a range of crime issues.
Read 9 tweets

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