Thread by @equalityAlec

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."

https://twitter.com/equalityAlec/status/1469398430103400450

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."

https://twitter.com/equalityAlec/status/1454486985943535624

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:

https://twitter.com/equalityAlec/status/1422949466986921991