“I use the term "punishment bureaucracy" instead of "criminal justice system" because it is a more accurate and less deceptive way to describe the constellation of public and private institutions that develop, enforce, and profit from criminal law.” — Alec Karakatsanis Copy Share Image
“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.” — Alec Karakatsanis Copy Share
“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… — Alec Karakatsanis Copy Share Image
“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… — Alec Karakatsanis Copy Share
“On the day Chicago police murdered Laquan McDonald, a seventeen-year-old Black teenager, in 2014, Chicago cops had six full-time public relations employees. As the city fought in court to keep evidence of the child's murder secret and then later to control the uproar when a judge ordered it to release a video of the shooting, Chicago increased its police budget… — Alec Karakatsanis Copy Share
“I use the term "punishment bureaucracy" instead of "criminal justice system" because it is a more accurate and less deceptive way to describe the… — Alec Karakatsanis Copy Share Image
“The second job of copaganda is to manufacture crises and panics about this narrow category of threats.” — Alec Karakatsanis Copy Share Image
“There is a gulf between the image and reality of the punishment bureaucracy. Copaganda creates that gulf. It is the system of government and… — Alec Karakatsanis Copy Share Image
“The third job of copaganda is to convince the public to spend more money on the punishment bureaucracy by framing police, prosecutors, probation, parole,… — Alec Karakatsanis Copy Share Image
“The first job of copaganda is to narrow our conception of threat. Rather than the bigger threats to our safety caused by people with… — Alec Karakatsanis Copy Share Image
“Police employing video propagandists has become more common after the murder of George Floyd.” — Alec Karakatsanis Copy Share Image
“The concept and terminology of "mugging" as opposed to, say, "robbery" was created as part of the panic, even though there was no evidence… — Alec Karakatsanis Copy Share Image
“Copaganda obscures the active role police play in doing bad things. Many people have criticized the police-invented term "officer-involved shooting" because it obscures who… — Alec Karakatsanis Copy Share Image
