Copaganda: How Police and the Media Manipulate Our News with Alec Karakatsanis and Robert Vargas

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Join us as we welcome Alec Karakatsanis and Robert Vargas to the store for a discussion of Karakatsanis's new book Copaganda: How Police and the Media Manipulate Our News, the deeply researched and definitive book on the way the media and police distract us from what matters. “Copaganda” is a special kind of propaganda employed by police, prosecutors, and news media. It stokes fear of police-recorded crime and distorts society’s responses to it. As the United States incarcerates five times more people per capita than it did in 1970—despite record low crime rates—a sprawling and profitable punishment bureaucracy spends a lot of time and money to manipulate what we think that bureaucracy does and why. Copaganda is all around us. When you hear on the radio that crime is up when it’s actually down—that’s copaganda. When your local TV station obsessively focuses on shoplifting by poor people while ignoring crimes of wage theft, tax evasion, and environmental pollution that harm far more people—that’s copaganda. When you hear on your daily podcast that there is a “shortage” of prison guards rather than too many people in prison—that’s copaganda. When your newspaper quotes an “expert” saying that more money for police, prosecutors, and prisons is the answer to violence despite scientific evidence to the contrary—that’s copaganda. Recognized by Teen Vogue as “one of the most prominent voices” on the criminal legal system and a featured guest on shows like The Daily Show with Trevor Noah and The Breakfast Club, Karakatsanis brings his sharp legal expertise, trenchant political analysis, and humorous personal storytelling to delve into one of the most critical topics in our society today. A former public defender, Alec Karakatsanis is the founder of the Civil Rights Corps, an organization designed to advocate for racial justice and bring systemic civil rights cases on behalf of impoverished people. He was named the 2016 Trial Lawyer of the Year by Public Justice and was awarded the Stephen B. Bright Award for contributions to indigent defense in the South by Gideon’s Promise. The author of Usual Cruelty: The Complicity of Lawyers in the Criminal Injustice System and Copaganda (The New Press), he lives in Washington, DC. Robert Vargas is Associate Professor in the Department of Sociology at University of Chicago. He is the author of the award-winning book Wounded City: Violent Turf Wars in a Chicago Barrio and Uninsured in Chicago: How the Social Safety Net Leaves Latinos Behind.