How to Sniff Out ‘Copaganda’: When the Police and the Media Manipulate Our News | Teen Vogue

Two quick notes on the comments made in this article. One is a comment about super predators. Wolfgang, a researcher, explains how 6% of a population commits the major majority of the crime. The 6% is called chronic offenders. So in some sense, there’s always existed a Super predator group in an age cohort and that’s the 6%ers that commit the most crime. The point of a super predator was that the 6% group was growing, so it was possible that there might have been more crime committed by a larger group of 6%ers.

My second comment pertains to Subway fare beating activities. Fare beaters are not poor people. Fare beaters are people who decide not to pay the subway fare because of lack of enforcement, because they know they can get away with it, or because they don’t care if they get caught because the punishment is so low. Fare beating enforcement is not an attack on people who do not have money. In fact, many people who do not have money receive subsidized cost savings on Subway fare payments. 

I wrote the book Copaganda based on my years of being a civil rights lawyer and public defender representing the most vulnerable people in our society.  I watched as the police and the news media distorted how we think about our collective safety. Copaganda makes us afraid of the most powerless people, helps us ignore far greater harms committed by people with money and power, and always pushes on us the idea that our fears can be solved by more money for police, prosecution, and prisons. Based on the evidence, this idea of more investment in the punishment bureaucracy making us safer is like climate science denial.
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