Bøker av Alec Karakatsanis

From the prizewinning rising legal star, the deeply researched and definitive book on the way the media and police distract us from what matters "Alec Karakatsanis is a leading voice in the legal struggle to dismantle mass incarceration. . . . What he says cannot be ignored."--James Forman' Jr. "Copaganda," as defined by Alec Karakatsanis, describes a special kind of propaganda, employed by police and news media, that shapes our fears and influences the social investments we make to address those fears. In a country that incarcerates five times more people per capita than it used to, and far more than other countries, the sprawling punishment bureaucracy spends a lot of time and money to manipulate public perception. This results in a distorted version of threat, crime, punishment, and safety in the news, which, for example, highlights crimes committed by marginalized people while ignoring more significant harms like wage theft, environmental crime, and deaths that result from harmful behavior like corporate fraud or cigarette smoke (which make the number of violent crimes pale in comparison).The news also suggests to us that increased government repression through police, prosecution, probation, parole, and prisons is the best response, as opposed to addressing the root causes of harm. In the spirit of Noam Chomsky's Manufacturing Consent, Copaganda includes chapters on "What Is News?," "Public Relations Spending by the Police," "Whose Perspective? How Sources Shape News," "How the News Uses Experts," "How to Smuggle Ideology into the News," and "Academic Copaganda."Recognized by Teen Vogue as "one of the most prominent voices" in contemporary discourse about the criminal legal system and featured on The Daily Show with Trevor Noah and The Breakfast Club, Karakatsanis brings his legal expertise, humor, personal stories, and analytical skills to delve into one of the most critical topics in our society today.

A "searing, searching, and eloquent" (Martha Minow, Harvard Law School) investigation into the role of the legal profession in perpetuating mass incarceration--now in an accessible paperback format from the award-winning civil rights lawyer "Usual Cruelty cuts to the core of what is critical to understand about our legal system, and about ourselves." --Anthony D. Romero, executive director, ACLU Usual Cruelty is a radical reconsideration of the American "injustice system" by someone who is actively--and successfully--challenging it. Hailed as a "fiery indictment" (Publishers Weekly) as well as a "compelling and damning argument" (Slate), Usual Cruelty offers a paradigm-shifting look at our legal system and the central role lawyers play in the "punishment bureaucracy." "Passionately argued" (The New Yorker), the book explores the viciousness of our courts, prisons, and jails, and the ways in which the legal profession has allowed itself to become desensitized to the pain these institutions inflict on our most vulnerable populations. Now in an accessible paperback format, Usual Cruelty will cement Karakatsanis's reputation as one of the most inspiring civil rights leaders of our time.

From an award-winning civil rights lawyer, a profound challenge to our society's normalization of the caging of human beings, and the role of the legal profession in perpetuating it Alec Karakatsanis is interested in what we choose to punish. For example, it is a crime in most of America for poor people to wager in the streets over dice; dice-wagerers can be seized, searched, have their assets forfeited, and be locked in cages. It's perfectly fine, by contrast, for people to wager over international currencies, mortgages, or the global supply of wheat; wheat-wagerers become names on the wings of hospitals and museums.He is also troubled by how the legal system works when it is trying to punish people. The bail system, for example, is meant to ensure that people return for court dates. But it has morphed into a way to lock up poor people who have not been convicted of anything. He's so concerned about this that he has personally sued court systems across the country, resulting in literally tens of thousands of people being released from jail when their money bail was found to be unconstitutional.Karakatsanis doesn't think people who have gone to law school, passed the bar, and sworn to uphold the Constitution should be complicit in the mass caging of human beingsan everyday brutality inflicted disproportionately on the bodies and minds of poor people and people of color and for which the legal system has never offered sufficient justification. Usual Cruelty is a profoundly radical reconsideration of the American ';injustice system' by someone who is actively, wildly successfully, challenging it.