Copaganda

1. Copaganda: The Systemic Manipulation of News

Copaganda creates that gulf. It is the system of government and news media propaganda that promotes mass incarceration, justifies the barbarities and profits that accompany it, and distorts our sense of what threatens us and what keeps us safe.

Defining the system. Copaganda is a pervasive system of government and news media propaganda designed to promote mass incarceration, legitimize its inherent cruelties and profits, and fundamentally warp public perception of what constitutes a threat and what ensures safety. This system thrives by creating a significant disconnect between the public image and the harsh reality of the punishment bureaucracy. For instance, a sheriff lauded nationally for "hugging" protestors simultaneously banned in-person family visits at his jail, profiting from expensive video calls.

Undermining reform efforts. The period following George Floyd's murder in 2020 saw unprecedented public criticism of mass incarceration and calls for "criminal justice reform." Copaganda actively worked to undermine this growing public consciousness, eager to legitimize and valorize the punishment bureaucracy. It achieved this by:

• Narrowing the public's understanding of threats to focus on specific, often low-level, crimes.
• Manufacturing crises and panics about these narrow categories of crime.
• Promoting punishment as the sole effective solution, diverting resources from root causes.

Asking critical questions. To resist copaganda, readers must adopt a critical lens when consuming news about crime and safety. This involves questioning:

• Why a particular story is deemed newsworthy over others.
• Who benefits from the story's framing and the words used.
• Whose perspectives are included or excluded, and who counts as an "expert."
• What kind of person is shaped by consuming such news.
  This vigilance is crucial because the ubiquity of copaganda subtly transforms public perception over time.

2. The Selective Lens of "Crime News"

Why is this story news? Why are other potential stories about things that harm us not in the news?

Ignoring greater harms. Mainstream news disproportionately focuses on a narrow range of crimes, typically those associated with poor people, strangers, immigrants, and people of color, while largely ignoring far more devastating harms perpetrated by the powerful. For example, the frenzy over "retail theft" often overshadows the estimated $50 billion in annual wage theft by employers, $1 trillion in tax evasion, or hundreds of thousands of yearly Clean Water Act violations causing widespread illness and death.

Political definition of crime. The definition of what constitutes a "crime" and how it is punished is not objective but a political creation, shaped by those in power to serve their interests. This selective focus dictates what the public perceives as urgent and what solutions are demanded from the political system. Imagine if daily news segments highlighted:

• "Bad Landlord of the Day" for building code violations.
• "Bad Employer of the Week" for wage-theft violations.
• "Bad Insurer of the Week" for fraudulent denials of health benefits.
  Such reporting would drastically alter public discourse and societal investment priorities.

Distorting public priorities. By emphasizing certain legal violations while ignoring others, the news distorts our understanding of actual threats and misleads us about effective social policies. This selective curation ensures that public attention is diverted from large-scale devastation caused by powerful entities, instead fixating on a small subset of officially recorded crimes, primarily by the poor. This process is the first step in understanding how society prioritizes punishment over holistic safety.

3. Manufacturing Fear Through Volume and Moral Panics

The volume, timing, frequency, and delivery method of news stories shape how we think about safety and crime.

Volume over reality. The sheer volume of news coverage, rather than objective crime rates, often dictates public perception of a "crime wave." Editors decline to cover ongoing systemic issues like debtors' prisons because they've been "already covered," yet endlessly report individual instances of low-level theft. This selective intensity creates a false sense of urgency. For example:

• A single viral shoplifting video spawned 309 articles, while a multi-million-dollar wage-theft settlement by the same company received no coverage.
• "Train theft" panics, initiated by lobbyists, led to immediate political action despite being minor problems.
• "Burglary tourism" narratives were built on scant evidence of a few additional burglaries.

Political manipulation of news. Fluctuations in crime news volume are often more responsive to political events and agendas than to actual changes in public safety. Fox News's "violent crime" segments ballooned before the 2022 election, then dropped immediately after, demonstrating a clear political motivation. Similarly, New York City's "violent crime" news spikes coincided with Mayor Eric Adams's public relations strategy, not actual crime rates.

Moral panics and repression. This manufactured volume often culminates in "moral panics," society-wide frenzies that almost invariably lead to expanded government repression. These panics, like those around "crack babies" or "super predators," result in more punitive laws and increased budgets for punishment bureaucrats, diverting resources from effective solutions. The selective curation of anecdotes, even if individually true, distorts reality by presenting isolated incidents as part of a broader, often fabricated, trend.

4. The Massive, Hidden Police PR Machine

Chicago is not alone. Cities across the country spend enormous amounts on police PR, and even elected officials are often kept in the dark about it.

Vast, undisclosed operations. Police departments nationwide operate massive, often secretive, public relations machines, spending millions of taxpayer dollars to manipulate public information. Chicago, for example, increased its full-time PR staff from 6 to 48 after the murder of Laquan McDonald, and then to 55. These budgets often exclude:

• Non-full-time PR work by officers.
• Dedicated videographers creating glorifying content.
• Branding, swag, and public events.
• Separate PR staff for prosecutors, police unions, and private police foundations.
  This vast ecosystem ensures a constant stream of pro-police narratives.

Cultivating media allies. Police PR teams actively cultivate long-term, mutually beneficial relationships with journalists, providing ready-made content (video, audio, quotes) that requires minimal effort from understaffed newsrooms. Internal documents reveal police ghostwriting op-eds for academics and strategizing media placement. This collaboration creates a "groupthink" where critical perspectives are often excluded, and police narratives are laundered as objective news or expert opinion.

Shaping conventional wisdom. The police PR ecosystem extends to academic institutions and punditry, where "experts" are selectively provided data, funded, and connected to reporters to validate police perspectives. This creates a "conventional wisdom" that legitimizes the punishment bureaucracy as the primary solution to social problems. Exposing these hidden PR budgets and relationships is crucial, as shifting these resources to other public agencies could drastically change how society perceives and addresses issues of well-being.

5. Biased Sources and "Experts" Shape Our Reality

Whose voices are included in the news to explain things to us and whose voices are ignored?

Dominance of official sources. News stories about public safety overwhelmingly rely on punishment bureaucrats (police, prosecutors) and corporate representatives as primary sources. These individuals have inherent professional and financial stakes in emphasizing certain social harms and advocating for government surveillance and individualized punishment. This leads to a narrow, self-serving narrative that often ignores broader societal issues. For example, articles on "rampant crime" in LA or "train thefts" predominantly quote police union presidents, police chiefs, and railroad executives.

Undisclosed conflicts of interest. "Experts" are frequently used to explain complex concepts, but their biases and conflicts of interest are often undisclosed. The New York Times, for instance, quoted "experts" blaming racial justice protests for rising murder rates, without revealing that these "experts" included former police officers, CIA consultants, or individuals with financial ties to the punishment bureaucracy. This anonymity and lack of transparency prevent readers from critically evaluating the basis of their opinions.

Manufacturing consensus. This selective curation of "experts" creates a false sense of consensus around pro-police narratives, even when contradictory evidence and dissenting scholarly opinions exist. Claims like "policing reduces crime and violence" are presented as undisputed facts, despite meta-studies showing "miniscule" effects. This practice stifles critical thinking and ensures that the public passively absorbs conventional wisdom that benefits the punishment bureaucracy. Readers must question:

• Who chose this expert?
• What are their potential conflicts of interest?
• Does the article present alternative viewpoints or evidence?

6. Academic Copaganda: Scholarly Justification for Repression

Elite criminology is awash in this kind of de-politicizing drivel dressed up as scholarship.

Manipulated data and omissions. Academic work often provides a veneer of legitimacy to copaganda, even from self-proclaimed "progressives." For example, two Harvard professors proposed adding 500,000 armed police, claiming the U.S. has fewer cops than comparable countries. They achieved this by:

• Intentionally excluding hundreds of thousands of federal and private police officers.
• Ignoring the higher police budgets, advanced weaponry, and longer workweeks in the U.S.
• Dismissing the massive social costs of increased policing, such as millions of assaults, jail deaths, and political repression.

Cynicism as a policy driver. These scholars often frame social investment and inequality reduction as "infeasible," leading them to conclude that authoritarian solutions like more police are the only "realistic" option. This cynical approach, dressed as reluctant pragmatism, serves to:

• De-politicize discussions about systemic inequality.
• Justify repressive policies by presenting them as unavoidable.
• Insulate proposals from criticism by claiming "progressive" credentials.
  Such scholarship, despite its lack of rigor, gains traction because it aligns with the interests of powerful institutions.

A self-referential loop. Pro-police academic research often forms a closed, self-referential loop, citing a small cabal of like-minded professors while ignoring contradictory evidence and meta-studies. This creates a false "consensus" that is then amplified by the news media. This academic copaganda, often funded by entities with ties to the punishment bureaucracy, prioritizes findings that support increased policing, even if those findings are based on flawed methodologies or ignore significant social costs. This intellectual sloppiness undermines the integrity of knowledge production and perpetuates harmful policies.

7. The "Bad Apple" Myth and the Cycle of "Reform"

Condemning Chauvin as a “bad apple” is a safer tactic. But it is not “bad apple” police officers who make 10.6 million arrests every year and who, since 1980, have helped quintuple the rate of incarceration in the U.S from its historical average.

Individualizing systemic violence. Copaganda consistently frames police misconduct as the actions of a few "bad apples," rather than a systemic issue inherent to the institution. This narrative is deployed after high-profile incidents of police violence, such as the murder of Valentina Orellana Peralta by an LAPD officer, where headlines blame a "stray bullet" or offer sympathetic profiles of the "good guy" cop. This approach:

• Obscures patterns of police killings and violence.
• Avoids deeper structural questions about policing.
• Prevents public awareness of intentional policy choices that enable such violence.

"Good cops" as a distraction. The media often highlights "good cops" kneeling with protestors or engaging in community activities, contrasting them with "bad apples." This tactic, exemplified by figures like Sheriff Swanson, aims to:

• Reaffirm the legitimacy of the system.
• Divert attention from the everyday brutality of "lawful" policing.
• Justify increased funding for the bureaucracy to "root out" outliers.
  However, the vast majority of arrests, surveillance, and incarceration are carried out by "good cops" following standard procedures, contributing to systemic harm.

The illusion of reform. When police violence sparks outrage, politicians and the media often respond with calls for "reform" that are either meaningless or serve to expand police power. Examples include:

• Demanding more "training" for police, despite a history of training instilling misconduct and counterinsurgency tactics.
• Promoting body cameras as "accountability" tools, when they were primarily sought by police for surveillance, plea coercion, and profit.
• Federal interventions that, despite identifying systemic abuse, often result in more resources for police departments.
  This cycle ensures that the punishment bureaucracy's failures become justifications for its expansion, rather than its transformation.

8. The Big Deception: Masking True Motivations

The news deceives the public about the motivations of punishment bureaucrats and the processes by which public safety policies come to be. It is copaganda’s Big Deception.

Superficial motivations. The news presents a superficial, simplistic, and often misleading account of why powerful people make public safety decisions. It assumes that policies are the product of reasonable leaders weighing options in the public's best interest, rather than organized interests asserting their power. This "Big Deception" leads people to:

• Focus on inconsequential issues while ignoring material inequality.
• Blame the wrong people and institutions for systemic problems.
• Support ineffective social change strategies.
  This misdirection prevents an accurate understanding of how politics and power truly operate.

The drug war as a case study. The "War on Drugs" exemplifies this deception. While politicians claimed to be fighting drug use for public health, Nixon's administration admitted its true aim was to disrupt Black and anti-war communities. Despite trillions spent and soaring overdose deaths, the news for decades portrayed the drug war as a good-faith effort. This omission of true motivations:

• Prevents daily confrontation about the evidence of policy failure.
• Obscures the institutional benefits to private prisons, police unions, and surveillance companies.
• Fosters a belief that mass criminalization is a necessary, albeit flawed, response to drug use.

Falsifying intentions. News outlets often repeat the stated motivations of powerful people without skepticism, even when evidence suggests otherwise. For example, New York City's mayor and governor implemented repressive policies "to reduce crime and the number of people who are mentally ill," a claim the news initially reported as fact, later subtly changing it to "tactics they say are meant to reduce crime." This subtle shift highlights how propaganda uses true facts to insinuate false intentions, making it harder for the public to predict future self-serving behavior by those in power.

9. Distracting from Material Conditions and Root Causes

Copaganda distracts people from the material conditions of our society that both produce and ameliorate crime.

Ignoring economic realities. News stories frequently blame "crime" on marginalized groups like homeless drug users, while conspicuously omitting any discussion of underlying material conditions such as poverty, lack of affordable housing, or inadequate healthcare. For instance, an article on "bike thieves" in Burlington, Vermont, blamed homeless meth users for crime without mentioning:

• The $47 trillion wealth transfer from the bottom 90% to the top 1% since 1975.
• The fact that a minimum-wage salary cannot afford a one-bedroom apartment in 93% of U.S. counties.
• The role of predatory financial policies and real-estate corruption in the housing crisis.
  This omission actively misinforms readers, preventing them from connecting social problems to their root causes.

False tradeoffs and "reality." Copaganda often presents a false dichotomy between societal ideals (like reducing inequality) and "safety." The narrative suggests that addressing systemic injustices is naive, while investing in punishment is "reality." This framing:

• Parodies officials who advocate for shifting resources from policing to social investments.
• Ignores that other wealthy countries spend far less on police and prisons yet are less violent.
• Perpetuates the myth that fairness, equality, and justice are inconsistent with "reality."
  This intellectual sleight of hand diverts attention from effective, evidence-based solutions to social violence.

Tweaks over transformation. The news's obsessive focus on minor policy "tweaks" within the punishment bureaucracy (e.g., court backlogs, police training) as solutions to society-wide violence distracts from the need for fundamental social investments. Decades of research show these tweaks have little impact on public safety, which is primarily determined by deeper cultural and societal features like inequality. By presenting these insignificant changes as serious solutions, copaganda traps the public in a cycle of ineffective "reforms" and prevents a meaningful examination of root causes like:

• Poverty and lack of access to healthcare.
• Affordable housing shortages and under-resourced schools.
• Systemic trauma and alienation.

10. Rebranding Repression as "Progressive" or "Care"

One of the most interesting features of copaganda is how brutal, senseless things are laundered with progressive language in order to be marketed under a new label.

Manufacturing confusion. Copaganda actively rebrands repressive policies with "progressive" language to confuse the public and garner support from well-meaning individuals. This strategy creates disorientation, making it difficult to distinguish between genuine change and the status quo. For example:

• New York City's mayor, Eric Adams, a former police officer, announced new police commissioners in front of murals of Black social justice leaders, despite his policies expanding policing.
• A San Francisco DA candidate, Brooke Jenkins, was labeled a "progressive prosecutor" by the media while advocating for regressive, authoritarian policies.
  This deliberate obfuscation allows for the implementation of harsh policies under a veneer of compassion and reform.

"Care" as coercion. The concept of "care" is increasingly co-opted to legitimize coercive government interventions. California's "CARE Court" system, for instance, was framed as providing "Community Assistance, Recovery and Empowerment" for mentally ill and unhoused individuals. In reality, it created a costly new court system backed by judicial orders and threats of conservatorship, without providing any new housing or treatment capacity. This rebranding:

• Deflects energy from addressing the material conditions causing homelessness and mental illness.
• Portrays coercive measures as "compassionate" and "empowering," despite medical experts deeming them inhumane and ineffective.
• Tricks the public into supporting the expansion of state control under a benevolent guise.

Exploiting marginalized voices. A key tactic is selectively amplifying marginalized voices that support punitive policies, creating the illusion that repression is what "repressed people want." News articles claim that Democrats' pro-police shifts are a response to "communities of color," despite polling showing these communities overwhelmingly support investments in social services over policing. This strategy:

• Inoculates authoritarian policies against progressive criticism.
• Disguises the influence of wealthy donors and police unions.
• Perpetuates the false dichotomy that marginalized communities must choose between justice and safety.
  This manipulation ensures that the punishment bureaucracy's agenda is advanced while appearing to be responsive to the needs of the vulnerable.

11. Resisting Copaganda: Tools for Truth and Action

Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four. If that is granted, all else follows.

The power of truth. The core of resisting copaganda lies in relentlessly seeking and speaking the truth, especially when powerful institutions work to obscure it. An honest examination of our collective values against the evidence would not support the current policies of mass incarceration. Copaganda thrives on making people believe that "two plus two make five," requiring considerable effort to maintain this illusion.

Tools for critical engagement. Individuals can fortify their minds against copaganda by:

• Questioning Punishment Bureaucrats: Ask specific questions about their investigations, enforcement decisions, accountability, and budgets (e.g., "Why do you arrest poor people for shoplifting but not bosses for wage theft?").
• Contextualizing Crime News: Insert factual statements into news consumption (e.g., "Police-reported crime excludes most property crime and police violence").
• Diversifying Information Sources: Consume less daily mainstream news; prioritize long-form journalism, books, critical podcasts, and reports from trusted organizations.
• Engaging with Art and Community: Immerse in art, music, and poetry to expand perspectives and connect with human experience.
• Getting Involved: Participate in mutual aid, study groups, or CourtWatch programs to build collective knowledge and pressure institutions.

Collective action and hope. Combating copaganda is a collective endeavor that requires building deep relationships and organized power. Social movements throughout history have demonstrated that public consciousness can be shifted, even when initial positions are unpopular. By centering the most vulnerable, relentlessly telling the truth, and building shared knowledge, communities can challenge the cynicism and misinformation that sustain the punishment bureaucracy. This collective vigilance is essential for fostering a society where genuine safety and justice can flourish.

Last updated: January 10, 2026