A profoundly important new book exposes the truth behind crime mythology

When Chesa Boudin was elected as San Francisco’s district attorney, a powerful political and communications operation immediately went into effect to try to undermine his policies.

Unrelenting news stories talked about huge increases in crime, about a lawless city, about how a progressive DA was making us all less safe.

That conflicted with reality: In most categories, crime, especially violent crime, was declining when Boudin was DA. And yet, like other progressive prosecutors, he lost his job.

In the meantime, massive amounts of serious, dangerous, crime have been on the rise. The largest single source of theft in this country, worth billions of dollars, is wage theft. Tax cheats steal trillions of dollars from the nation’s coffers. Air and water pollution kills far more people every year than murderers.

But we don’t hear about that on the news, and we don’t read about it in the press. Instead, we get endless stories on retail theft, occasional street violence, and other crimes that create an impression of a society that needs more cops and prisons.

This has massive, lasting policy implications, and we are seeing it in San Francisco right now: Programs that help prevent crime and inequality are gutted so that more money can go to what author Alec Karakatsanis calls the Punishment Bureacracy can collect more millions of dollars.

Karakatsanis is a former public defender and a civil rights lawyer who has seen the impact of the misnamed “criminal justice system” from the frontlines. His new book, Copaganda: How Police and the Media Manipulate Our News, is a master work of reporting.

It describes, with extensive detail and examples, how the Punishment Bureaucracy creates media narratives that are at odds with the facts and reality, but help perpetuate dangerous policies that cause a lot more harm than the supposed “crimes” they are describing.

He provides background, explains how reporters are taken in, and offers solutions.

This is one of the most important books I’ve read in years. It ought to be required reading for anyone in community organizing and activism, anyone who wonders how our society became such a carceral mess—and frankly, any journalist who covers crime.

I caught up with Karakatsanis for an interview, which follows. (It’s been edited for space and clarity.)

48HILLS: One of the things you talk about in your introduction is that copaganda makes us afraid of other people, and that the system would be different if the news media told different stories.

ALEC KARAKATSANIS: One of the functions of copaganda is that is distracts people of what things matter. We don’t get push alerts on our phones wage theft, pollution, tax evasion, crimes that are orders more important that minor retail theft. There may be one big investigative story somewhere about plastic pollution, which is very dangerous to all of us, but we get five or six stories a night about retail theft. This creates a public perception about which problems we have to address right way.

48HILLS: You also say that the Punishment Bureaucracy is a tool for preserving inequality.

ALEC KARAKATSANIS: In any given society, the police serve to protect the distribution of wealth and power. Modern policing started to protect slave owners and to crush labor organizing. It’s been that case in the US in the 1890s, the 1960s, and today. This is nothing radical: In an unequal society, the police protect unequal wealth and power.

I talk about the Punishment Bureaucracy because it’s not just police, not just prosecutors, not just judges. It’s the constellation of multi-billion-dollar industries. The people who make Tasers and AI facial recognition programs and bail bond companies and the prison telecom industry. The term “criminal justice system” is just propaganda; this is a bloated bureaucracy that exists to expand its own size and power.

48HILLS: Tell us about the politics of news coverage, particularly the sources that reporters use. You talk about how media outlets may cover a story once, but the pro-cop right wing has an effective echo chamber.

ALEC KARAKATSANIS: This is a critical point to understand—whose harm feels like a front-page story every day? I used to pitch stories about massive violations of civil rights, about people locked in jail because their loved ones didn’t have money, and I would hear reporters say that “someone did that story a few months ago.” But if there’s an armed robbery in Pittsburgh, nobody says “someone just did a story about an armed robbery in Buffalo.” What types of stories are newsworthy? What is front and center?

The news consumer doesn’t always realize that there’s a world behind each news story. News is notably affected by the sources that are connected to the reporting. The Punishment Bureaucracy spends billions on this: The Los Angeles Police Department has 25 full-time PR people, and the LA Sheriff has 42 more. The New York City Police Department has 90. The Chicago Police Department has 50. That doesn’t even count the for-profit consultants, the district attorney’s offices, the police unions … they are all cultivating a pipeline to the news.

Local TV news shows have to fill 22 minutes every night, and the cops make it easy—they provide stories, and audio, and video.

I have been a source myself—but for every one of us, there are thousands paid for by large corporations and the police. Things don’t just magically become news.

48HILLS: You talk in the book about the myth of “bad apples.” I’m told all the time, sure there are a few bad cops that cause problems, but there are a few bad people in any organization, and that shouldn’t reflect on everyone else.

ALEC KARAKATSANIS: This is one of the most important sections in the book. First of all, none of these institutions have meaningful accountability. Most of the horrible crimes are swept under the rug by the “good apples.” But most of the harm and violence that the system causes is not “bad apples,” it’s the people in charge. This country locks up six times as many Black people as South Africa did under apartheid. The mass incarceration system works exactly as it was designed.

These are policy positions, and laws being passed. What is a crime? Do we search for illegal drugs in dorm rooms at Yale or in low-income Black communities? The entire Punishment Bureaucracy is designed to serve the interests of the people who have wealth and power.

48HILLS: Your book discusses the recall of [former SF District Attorney] Chesa Boudin. How is that a case study in copaganda?

ALEC KARAKATSANIS: It was a massive case of flat-Earth, climate science-denialism stuff. All the relevant crimes were down when Boudin was in office; the “crisis” was entirely fabricated. The truth is that the Punishment Bureaucracy has very little impact on harm and violence. What determines the harm and violence are inequality, access to health care, early childhood education … all of the Chesa Boudin stuff was a giant propaganda machine to suggest something that isn’t true.

48HILLS: The current media environment suggests that Democratic politicians need to be more “tough on crime.” Tell us why you disagree.

ALEC KARAKAYSANIS: That’s utterly devoid of any evidentiary basis. If you ask people in polls or focus groups, huge majorities, super majorities, say that better health care, education, affordable housing, protecting children from exposure to lead, these are more important. People favor taking money from the Punishment Bureaucracy and putting it into other things.

It’s extremely dangerous if you are helping to create and build a system that is taking away money from the society we want.

You can order Copaganda from your local independent bookstore or at The New Press site.