THREAD. Given the recent police and corporate hysteria over crime, homelessness, drug use, and retail theft, here are a few helpful caveats for journalists interested in being more objective to put in stories about "crime data" or when police ask them to report on a "crime wave":
"Property crime data excludes most property crime, including illegal seizures by police (which roughly equal all reported burglary), wage theft by employers (which is about 5x more than all reported property crime), and tax evasion (which is about 20x more than all wage theft)."
"Violent crime data reported by police excludes nearly all of the violent crimes committed by police and jail guards, which experts estimate to include several million physical and sexual assaults each year."
"Although police officials emphasized 'violent crime' in interviews, police officials nationally choose to spend only 4% of all police time on violent crime." nytimes.com/2020/06/19/ups…
"The vast majority of sexual assault and gender-based violence is not reported to police because most survivors of such violence do not believe that police, prosecutors, and prisons are an effective way to address that harm."
"Experts have concluded that police-reported crime rates are generally lower in societies that spend less money on police, prosecutors, and prisons and that spend more money on health care, education, poverty reduction, and wellness."
"Although police officials called for more arrests and harsher punishment for drug offenses, such policies have cost over $1 trillion for 40 years, sent tens of millions of people to prison, and left the U.S. with higher rates of drug use and overdoses."
In each story about a crime, the reporter can include the following accurate context: "Although a person has been arrested, the scientific consensus is that putting the person in a cage will not have any benefit to public safety and will kill them sooner."
And reporters can include this directly after quoting a police official or prosecutor: "Police officials and prosecutors have a history of regularly making false and misleading statements to the media in order to mislead the public in service of a political agenda."
All of these concepts are fleshed out in more detail with citations here:

• • •

Missing some Tweet in this thread? You can try to force a refresh
 

Keep Current with Alec Karakatsanis

Alec Karakatsanis Profile picture

Stay in touch and get notified when new unrolls are available from this author!

Read all threads

This Thread may be Removed Anytime!

PDF

Twitter may remove this content at anytime! Save it as PDF for later use!

Try unrolling a thread yourself!

how to unroll video
  1. Follow @ThreadReaderApp to mention us!

  2. From a Twitter thread mention us with a keyword "unroll"
@threadreaderapp unroll

Practice here first or read more on our help page!

More from @equalityAlec

21 Dec
THREAD: Have you noticed how the news often reports the stated motives of powerful people as their *actual motives.* This is one way in which the news can subtly reinforce myths that benefit the wealthiest and most powerful interests in our society.
Look at how Manchin's actions are often portrayed as him having good-faith ideological concerns (like "inflation") rather than him being rich, owning a coal company, family rich from pharmaceuticals, and being paid by dark money to serve them. cnn.com/2021/12/19/pol…
This is harmful because it obscures for all of us how the political system really works and what interests, biases, and forms of corruption are actually determining why politicians do what they do.
Read 6 tweets
19 Dec
THREAD: A young trucker whose brakes failed before a crash that killed 4 people just got sentenced to 110 years in prison--mandatory death in prison for a crash he didn't intend. There are several very important and hidden things going:
First, a great irony of US law is that it purports to set a high standard of evidence (beyond a reasonable doubt) to convict a person, but it allows human caging of millions without a shred of evidence that *the sentence* does any good.
In fact, most sentencing in U.S. is unconstitutional. Constitution requires judges to apply strict scrutiny when a "fundamental right" is taken away, and bodily liberty is such a right. This means sentence must be as narrowly tailored as possible to serve a compelling interest.
Read 7 tweets
19 Dec
He lost control of his truck and instead of a traffic ticket, the “progressive prosecutor” wants him to die in prison notorious for sexual and physical assault. Why? He had the audacity to say he was innocent and wouldn’t waive his right to a trial. thedenverchannel.com/news/local-new…
Compare the sneaky way this monstrous “progressive prosecutor” pretends that the jury sanctioned this outcome with what the actual jurors say:
The mentality of this “progressive prosecutor” reflects a deep (but intentionally cultivated) sickness in our society. When we see bad outcomes, we have been trained to look for a “bad person” to blame. This focus on individual blame is profitable for people who control systems.
Read 5 tweets
17 Dec
Eric Adams announced yesterday that he would be bringing back solitary confinement to Rikers. And then he joked about it. politico.com/newsletters/ne…
One in 9 Black men in Pennsylvania will experience solitary confinement.
The way solitary confinement is used in the U.S. constitutes torture as defined by the UN. It is a federal felony crime to torture someone. In the U.S., the law is interpreted and enforced by elites, and they only enforce some laws against some people. yalelawjournal.org/forum/the-puni…
Read 4 tweets
16 Dec
THREAD: Have you wondered about the secret targeting of Nipsey Hustle by cops before his death? Internal docs from LAPD now reveal a dystopian campaign to target Nipsey, and pervasive corruption to benefit real estate developers. Some of the stuff in here is chilling.
The story begins when Nipsey fulfilled his longtime dream of buying the Marathon Clothing Store. The City, developers, and police had other plans for the property, and they began a yearslong effort of surveillance and brutality to try to stop it.
In one internal document generated by Palantir (a corporation that profits by helping police cage poor people more efficiently with big data), LAPD records appear to show 58 stops and 7 arrests at the intersection outside Nipsey Hustle's store in the week after its Grand Opening.
Read 11 tweets
15 Dec
THREAD. Have you ever wondered exactly what it looks like when police work with real estate developers to target the poorest people in our society? Here is a story just revealed from City of Los Angeles emails that should shake you to the core.
The story starts when the LAPD's "Neighborhood Prosecutor" meets one of the leading developers in Chinatown. The two begin *strategizing together* about how to use cops to target a specific unhoused activist. Here's what the report says: automatingbanishment.org/section/3-real…
The "neighborhood prosecutor" offered city's powers to remove the unhoused person from the neighborhood. The real estate developer arranged for LAPD’s Senior Lead Officer for the area to tell the unhoused person that they would get court orders to banish him from a public park.
Read 10 tweets

Did Thread Reader help you today?

Support us! We are indie developers!


This site is made by just two indie developers on a laptop doing marketing, support and development! Read more about the story.

Become a Premium Member ($3/month or $30/year) and get exclusive features!

Become Premium

Too expensive? Make a small donation by buying us coffee ($5) or help with server cost ($10)

Donate via Paypal

Or Donate anonymously using crypto!

Ethereum

0xfe58350B80634f60Fa6Dc149a72b4DFbc17D341E copy

Bitcoin

3ATGMxNzCUFzxpMCHL5sWSt4DVtS8UqXpi copy

Thank you for your support!

Follow Us on Twitter!

:(