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Famous Alec Karakatsanis Quotes

“If you're an amateur, professional, or aspiring journalist in any city in the U.S., a good story for you would be to dig into the budget and number of employees that your local police department devotes to all forms of public relations. There's a reason they try to hide it.”

JournalismLaw EnforcementCriminal Justice SystemMedia ManipulationMass IncarcerationCopagandaThe Mafia In BluePunishment BureaucracyPolice BudgetsPolice Are Defunding Our Cities
Book:Copaganda: How Police and the Media Manipulate Our News
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“Copaganda leaves the public in a vague state of fear. It manufactures suspicions against poor people, immigrants, and racial minorities rather than, say, bankers, pharmaceutical executives, fraternity brothers, landlords, employers, and polluters.”

Law EnforcementCriminal Justice SystemMedia ManipulationMass IncarcerationCopagandaThe Mafia In BluePunishment BureaucracyIgnoring Elite Criminality
Book:Copaganda: How Police and the Media Manipulate Our News
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“The third job of copaganda is to convince the public to spend more money on the punishment bureaucracy by framing police, prosecutors, probation, parole, and prisons as effective solutions to interpersonal harm. Copaganda links safety to the things the punishment bureaucracy does, while downplaying the connection between safety and the material, structural conditions of people's lives.”

Law EnforcementCriminal Justice SystemMedia ManipulationMass IncarcerationCopagandaThe Mafia In BluePunishment BureaucracyPunishment Vs Justice
Book:Copaganda: How Police and the Media Manipulate Our News
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“Cultural copaganda is all around us--from the CIA , starting in the 1950s funding projects like the Iowa Writers' Workshop or fronting literary magazines to influence modern journalism and fiction writing, to the DEA paying Hollywood in the 1990s to insert drug war propaganda into popular television shows, to the vast array of police and military consultants who shape every fictional TV series, podcast, or movie that touches on crime. Shows like COPS and Law & Order have done a lot to distort society's understanding of what the punishment bureaucracy does.”

PropagandaLaw EnforcementCriminal Justice SystemMedia ManipulationMass IncarcerationCopagandaThe Mafia In BluePunishment BureaucracyCultural Propaganda
Book:Copaganda: How Police and the Media Manipulate Our News
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“The entire genre of police procedurals mythologizes punishment bureaucrats and the allegedly sophisticated technologies they wield. And it's not just Hollywood--fictional copaganda planned and paid for by the police and their industry allies is on TikTok and Youtube, and it's behind many community groups, online posts, neighborhood listserv emails, and charitable campaigns that seem genuine to the unassuming public.”

Law EnforcementCriminal Justice SystemMedia ManipulationMass IncarcerationCopagandaThe Mafia In BluePunishment BureaucracyPolice ProceduralsCop ShowsCop Shows Are Propaganda
Book:Copaganda: How Police and the Media Manipulate Our News
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“The concept and terminology of "mugging" as opposed to, say, "robbery" was created as part of the panic, even though there was no evidence that this ill-defined activity was increasing. This is similar to the creation of the term "carjacking" in Detroit in the early 1990s.”

Law EnforcementCriminal Justice SystemMedia ManipulationMass IncarcerationCopagandaThe Mafia In BluePunishment BureaucracyMuggingCarjacking
Book:Copaganda: How Police and the Media Manipulate Our News
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“There is a gulf between the image and reality of the punishment bureaucracy. Copaganda creates that gulf. It is the system of government and news media propaganda that promotes mass incarceration, justifies the barbarities and profits that accompany it, and distorts our sense of what threatens us and what keeps us safe.”

Law EnforcementCriminal Justice SystemMedia ManipulationMass IncarcerationCopagandaThe Mafia In BluePunishment Bureaucracy
Book:Copaganda: How Police and the Media Manipulate Our News
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