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Alec Karakatsanis Profile picture
@equalityAlec
Dec 29, 2021 • 50 tweets • 15 min read • Read on X
UPDATED THREAD: In 2021, we heard a lot about how police and prisons need more cash because "crime is surging." It's copaganda. I’ve made a new thread of threads with resources to help understand the issue and respond.
1) We must first see that there is a difference between what police do and what police say they do. For example, police talk a lot about “violent crime” in the media, but U.S. police only choose to spend 4% of their time on what they call "violent crime.” nytimes.com/2020/06/19/ups…
2) Police also talk a lot about protecting property and how bad theft is, but police steal more property through civil forfeiture than all burglary crime in the U.S. combined. Do you know about civil forfeiture?
3) Police also manipulate crime data. They don’t count the estimated several million *violent and sexual crimes that cops and jail guards commit,* which would reverse the police-reported “crime stats” in every city and state. ;
4) Police get $$$ 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…
5) Why do you think there is such a big gap between what cops tell us about what they do and what cops actually do? You have to learn the context behind all these calls to increase police and prison budgets: it’s a profitable bureaucratic business.
6) So what is the context? U.S. already cages people more than any society in modern history. Almost everyone caged in the U.S. is poor. U.S. cages Black people 6 times rate of South Africa at height of Apartheid. If human caging made us safe, we’d be safest country in the world.
7) The evidence shows the opposite: the decades-long scientific consensus is that human caging does not reduce crime. This is the most recent meta-study of 116 studies on the question. Sending people to cages does not reduce crime, it increases it: journals.uchicago.edu/doi/10.1086/71…
8) Every year in a cage takes *two years* off a person’s life. Because U.S. cages so much, the overall average U.S. life expectancy is 1.8 years lower than if we caged people as much as other comparable countries! Cops and prisons are killing us all.
9) Let this sink in because it’s one of the most important facts you’ll ever read, rarely reported in the news: the policy choice to arrest and cage so many people is costing the U.S. hundreds of millions of years of human life. It’s one of the great modern historical atrocities.
10) If all of the bureaucrats in the system know that human caging and separating millions of families doesn’t make us safer, why do they do it? Read this thread on why 40 years of the “War on Drugs” led to even worse drug problems:
11) So, what works? The evidence for real community safety is clear: invest in healthcare, housing, mental health, addiction treatment, teachers, art/music/theater/sports for kids, violence interruption, mutual aid, etc. Most of all, reduce inequality:
12) And thus a central role of copaganda: distract from inequality. The goal is to extract wealth from working class, make them less safe, and then offer them only those “solutions” that increase the power and control over them by people who own things. currentaffairs.org/2020/08/why-cr…
13) And so what cops say about “crime” is only a tiny part of safety. To start, which of many harms in the world is a "crime" is a political choice by people in power who have a lot of money. They have decided that many really bad things aren’t crimes.
14) And then cops ignore most "crime." Cops only look for *some* crimes by *some* people in *some* places. A fight in a poor school is recorded as a “crime,” but a fight in a wealthy private school is not. I collected examples that will blow your mind: yalelawjournal.org/forum/the-puni…
15) We can begin to see a pattern: What elites call “crime” is different from what causes harm. Air pollution, much of it illegal and technically "criminal," kills 10 million people per year! Elites choose not to enforce it as a crime.
16) Did you know that illegal bank foreclosures are linked to more deaths than all homicides combined and that “law enforcement” officials ignore about 100,000 violations of the Clean Water Act every year that cause cancer, death, child tooth loss, etc…? yalelawjournal.org/forum/the-puni…
17) Tobacco kills 480,000 people every year in the U.S, including 41,000 from second-hand smoke. Alcohol kills 260 people per day. These preventable deaths combined are far larger than the number of deaths from the drugs cops have treated as “crime” for decades.
18) 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.
18) Interests that own news outlets benefit from people focusing urgently on police-reported “crime” and not on crimes like wage theft, illegal pollution, illegal evictions, fraudulent foreclosures, tax evasion, etc. even though these crimes cost far more.
19) Tax evasion by wealthy people costs 20 times more than all wage theft, estimated to be about $1 trillion dollars per year. The money involved in these crimes could eradicate whole classes of social suffering, but these laws are widely unenforced against the rich.
20) 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…
21) Interests that own news outlets benefit from people focusing urgently on police-reported “crime” and not on crimes like wage theft, illegal pollution, illegal evictions, fraudulent foreclosures, tax evasion, etc. even though these crimes cost far more.
22) Because no frantic articles every day about wage theft, tax evasion, and other crimes of wealthy, public perception of which property crimes cause most harm is distorted. Powerful people spend a lot of money manipulating what we think should be urgent.
23) Instead of billions spent by corporations and police to influence media coverage, imagine if the harm done to people most harmed by inequality determined what counted as urgent to us:
24) Cops are bad at preventing harm b/c most harm is caused by inequality, deprivation, toxic masculinity, illness, lack of relationships with others, alienation, lead poison, no access to care, etc. This is how other countries spend less on cages and have less violence.
25) In fact, the cops know that the evidence shows that even a few days in jail increases future “crime” by destabilizing people’s lives, lost jobs, lost housing, lost children, interrupted medical/mental health care, trauma/disease in jail. vera.org/downloads/publ…
26) Most people get that police, prosecutors, and prisons don’t prevent harm or make survivors whole. The vast majority of survivors of violent crime choose not to report their harm to the U.S. legal system because it doesn’t provide what they need. law.ua.edu/lawreview/file…
27) People say: but even if "crime" is manipulated, excludes cop violence, and "violent crime" is actually down in many places, shootings and homicides are up this year. Well, gun sales are way up and we’ve been in a global pandemic mental health crisis.
28) What cops call "violent crime" is near historic lows in the U.S., but it is still a terrible tragedy and public policy problem. But as with all forms of interpersonal violence, the best way to address homicides/violence isn’t with more armed bureaucrats and human cages. Image
29) One fact police asking for more $$ ignore: to the extent some police-reported “crimes” increased in 2021, many went down. Trend was across cities, counties, and states, many with *increased* police funding, most with no major reforms. It’s not linked to “reforms.”
30) Police PR focuses on month to month or year to year numbers, emphasizing different crimes at different times if one goes up, conveying constant increase but obscuring: we have among lowest murders in last 50 years, and other countries with less incarceration have *way fewer.*
31) Most reporting about “crime surges” also 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! Here are some caveats to insert into news coverage of “crime stats.”
32) Cops thus cherry-pick data, focusing on “shootings” when “violent crime” is down and focusing on “property crime” when homicides are down, etc. This manipulation is a huge scandal: for decades the public has hugely overestimated crime rates: fivethirtyeight.com/features/many-…
33) We must remember that those who want to cage human beings have to prove not only that it reduces harm, but that it is better than all of the other social investments and community interventions that science and experience have proven effective.
34) Always ask the person calling for more human caging: have you met this moral and scientific burden?
35) Public debate lacks proper analysis of these costs. People urging more cash to cops b/c of “crime” don’t count the *costs*: millions of arrests and separated kids; millions of lost jobs, homes, medical appointments; tens of millions of police assaults.
36) People urging more cash to cops b/c of "crime" don't count the hundreds of millions of criminal records, ubiquitous surveillance over ever aspect of our lives. They don't count the police murders. The Hundreds of millions of years of lost life.
37) The public debate also ignores what we allow to happen in our cages: putting someone in a cage means a high chance of sexual assault, physical beatings, disease, no sunlight/fresh air/exercise, torture of solitary confinement, untreated cancer, no family hugs for years, etc
38) Have you met your burden?
39) A dirty secrets: the money spent on police/prisons has been used by bureaucrats for total surveillance and to infiltrate and crush each major social movement for economic, racial, gender, and environmental justice in the past 100 years.
40) Idea of “crime waves" after a few dozen more shootings or a few retail thefts w/o urgently reporting how many people died from unstable housing, lack of healthcare/pollution/malnutrition is how elites keep us focused on solutions of control and profit and not liberation.
41) We discussed this in more depth here if you prefer podcasts! @CitationsPod with @adamjohnsonNYC @WideAsleepNima @tamaranopper podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/ep-…
42) Although there are amazing journalists shedding light on these issues, we rarely hear these perspectives in corporate media b/c many media institutions have deep relationships with corporate and carceral bureaucracies. This affects what they tell you.
43) The bottom line is that public safety is extremely important. Our society’s obsession with investments in police/prison bureaucracy are profitable to a small number of people, but the weight of scientific evidence shows they are catastrophic to health and safety.
44) Finally, not all human tragedy is preventable, but quite a lot of it is. Accepting copaganda on “crime” and police data about that concept as a proxy for holistic safety is the original sin of most public commentary in this area, and we must fortify our minds against it.
For more resources on this, I suggest you read this fantastic report by @interruptcrim interruptingcriminalization.com/cops-dont-stop…
To read more about the history of U.S. police and copaganda, I suggest Our Enemies in Blue by Kristian Williams. And for an inspiring, practical account of how communities have worked to build safety and wellness without police violence, read Anarchy Works by @PeterGelderloos
If you made it through this whole heavy thread, you deserve a photo of one of my favorite old cats (he is down to one tooth) and a photo of a one of my favorite kittens sitting in one of my favorite plants. They are both proponents of shrinking police and prison bureaucracies. ImageImage
As discussed in the source, this should read: bank foreclosures, mortgage fraud, and the related financial crimes that led to the financial crisis of 2008 and resulting increase in poverty.

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More from @equalityAlec

Alec Karakatsanis Profile picture
Feb 12
THREAD. Last year, we filed landmark lawsuits on behalf of children in Michigan alleging a conspiracy between sheriffs + private equity-owned companies to end family jail visits for millions of kids across the U.S. as part of a scheme to make more $$ on phone/video calls.
Several days ago, a second Michigan sheriff has announced that this ban on visits is wrong and destructive, and that they will be ending it. Hundreds of sheriffs are still doing this--do you know what's going on in your community? facebook.com/SheriffAlyshia…
You can watch a video from NBC News explaining what's going on across the country:
Read 5 tweets
Alec Karakatsanis Profile picture
Feb 10
THREAD. Every day I get to work with amazing people from all walks of life who are dedicating their lives to fighting government repression and corporate predation. They do it strategically and relentlessly. The incompetence and grifting of political elites makes a mockery of it.
For years, Jeffries and leading Democrats pushed an agenda of mass economic plunder, health insurance profiteering, prisons, militarism, genocide, identity politics, jingoism, and ecological ruin. It's why he can't say anything meaningful with credibility in this fascist moment.
The crisis is as acute as it has been in my lifetime. People of goodwill and influence must jettison leaders like this from public life. We need to organize and demand people who can put forward a simple, popular plan of widespread human flourishing and resistance to cruelty.
Read 8 tweets
Alec Karakatsanis Profile picture
Jan 27
THREAD. The time has come for more people to be talking about how the news media manipulates coverage of public polling. The New York Times's latest coverage of polling about Trump is unethical and dangerous.
The New York Times recently published an alarming article purporting to tell its elite liberal readers that "Trump's Policies" are widely popular. Image
Specifically, the headline and key parts of the article made the bold (and worrying) claim that most people in the U.S. wanted Trump to deport "everyone living in the U.S. without authorization." Image
Read 14 tweets
Alec Karakatsanis Profile picture
Jan 21
THREAD. A very grave problem, across New York Times news stories of almost every subject, is the brazen stupidity and credulity of the reporting. Here is the paper's primary response to Trump's absurd push to designate drug cartels as "terrorist" groups: Image
First, no reasonable observer of modern U.S. politics or history could conclude that the U.S. has ever been serious about "defeating" terrorist groups or drug distribution organizations. In fact, the U.S. has been the world's most significant state sponsor of each.
That's not the point of either its selective and laughably contradictory weaponization and construction of the term "terrorist" or its comically disastrous "War on Drugs." I wrote about the latter at length, explaining why all of this is propaganda: equalityalec.substack.com/p/the-big-dece…
Read 9 tweets
Alec Karakatsanis Profile picture
Jan 17
Not a single word in unanimous Supreme Court opinion mentioned the primary reason TikTok ban passed. The real reason was content-based, triggering a legal standard that would have struck it down. Very interesting dynamics on why TikTok decided not to press its strongest argument.
Leaders in both parties were extremely clear that it was motivated by the view that TikTok was making young people too pro-Palestine and genocide-aware. Now, of course, both parties are sounding very different after Gaza was destroyed and the news is talking about a ceasefire.
For many reasons, TikTok does not want to be seen as a place that spreads left ideas. Would be really interesting to learn more about who made the decision not to press the strongest legal arguments and how much the lawyers explained to the decision makers.
Read 4 tweets
Alec Karakatsanis Profile picture
Jan 14
THREAD. It's important for all people of good will to understand the Laken Riley Act before the Senate votes on it tomorrow. It’s unconstitutional. It’s horrific in every word and clause. But there is a deeper, more imminent violence lurking beneath its hate-filled text.
First the background. The Laken Riley Act is unprecedented in modern U.S. history. It requires federal DHS bureaucracy to build billions in new infrastructure to cage any undocumented person *even accused* of petty theft, shoplifting, or several other property crimes.
A key aspect of the law is people are rounded up and put into mass caging facilities (built and usually run for profit) for a mere *accusation.* A person (even a child) need not be convicted, and they are taken from their families and jobs and churches and schools immediately.
Read 29 tweets

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