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 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.

Experience the thrill of Firmly Convinced, a collection of true-life crime stories told by a veteran assistant prosecutor who worked in New Jersey courtrooms for a quarter century.

In these pages, you'll ride alongside prosecutors maintaining integrity in the face of chaos, defense attorneys fiercely defending their clients' rights, and judges meticulously balancing the scales of justice. Each vignette unveils the raw, unfiltered heart of the justice system, exposing the individuals who uphold the law and those who dare to challenge it.

Readers will feel the tension, experience the triumphs, and grasp the struggles that shape the relentless quest for justice.

By the end, they'll gain a profound appreciation for the delicate interplay of truth, law, and order that sustains society.

An influential legal scholar argues that the Supreme Court played a pivotal role in the rise of mass incarceration in America.

With less than 5 percent of the world's population and almost a quarter of its prisoners, America indisputably has a mass incarceration problem. How did it happen? Tough-on-crime politics and a racially loaded drug war are obvious and important culprits, but another factor has received remarkably little attention: the Supreme Court. The Constitution contains numerous safeguards that check the state's power to lock people away. Yet since the 1960s the Supreme Court has repeatedly disregarded these limits, bowing instead to unfounded claims that adherence to the Constitution is incompatible with public safety.

In Justice Abandoned, Rachel Barkow highlights six Supreme Court decisions that paved the way for mass incarceration. These rulings have been crucial to the meteoric rise in pretrial detention and coercive plea bargaining. They have enabled disproportionate sentencing and overcrowded prison conditions. And they have sanctioned innumerable police stops and widespread racial discrimination. If the Court were committed to protecting constitutional rights and followed its standard methods of interpretation, none of these cases would have been decided as they were, and punishment in America would look very different than it does today.

More than just an autopsy of the Supreme Court's errors, Justice Abandoned offers a roadmap for change. Barkow shows that the originalist methodology adopted by the majority of the current Court demands overturning the unconstitutional policies underlying mass incarceration. If the justices genuinely believe in upholding the Constitution in all cases, then they have little choice but to reverse the wrongly decided precedents that have failed so many Americans.

Gabriel Lock is a young lawyer who chooses a forced resignation and leaves the state attorney's office. At his father's civil law firm, he represents industrious, salt of the earth men and women who build honest lives on the other side of Miami Vice. Armed with his smarts, morals, and faith, Gabriel battles for his clientele. As his practice develops, he learns that his duties to his clients, and the search for truth are often at odds. He discovers that justice is more than black or white, and results not only affect his clients' lives, but his own.

Experience the thrill of Firmly Convinced, a collection of true-life crime stories told by a veteran assistant prosecutor who worked in New Jersey courtrooms for a quarter century.

In these pages, you'll ride alongside prosecutors maintaining integrity in the face of chaos, defense attorneys fiercely defending their clients' rights, and judges meticulously balancing the scales of justice. Each vignette unveils the raw, unfiltered heart of the justice system, exposing the individuals who uphold the law and those who dare to challenge it.

Readers will feel the tension, experience the triumphs, and grasp the struggles that shape the relentless quest for justice.

By the end, they'll gain a profound appreciation for the delicate interplay of truth, law, and order that sustains society.

The Digital Fourth Amendment: Privacy and Policing in Our Online World takes the reader inside the legal world of how courts are interpreting the Fourth Amendment in the digital age. Computers, smartphones, and the Internet have transformed criminal investigations, and even a routine crime is likely to lead to digital evidence. But courts are struggling to apply old Fourth Amendment concepts to the new digital world. Mechanically applying old rules from physical investigations doesn't make sense, as it often leads to dramatic expansions of government power just based on coincidences of computer design.

Written by a prominent law professor whose scholarship has often been relied on by courts in the field, The Digital Fourth Amendment shows how judges must craft new rules for the new world of digital evidence. It explains the challenges courts confront as they translate old protections to a new technological world, bringing the reader up to date on the latest cases and rulings. Informed by legal history and the latest technology, this book gives courts a blueprint for legal change with clear rules for courts to adopt to restore our constitutional rights in the computer age.

The United States has experienced a dramatic shift in attitudes towards cannabis use from the 1970s, when only 12% of Americans said that they thought that cannabis should be legal, to today. What once had been a counterculture drug supplied for the black market by socially marginal figures like drug smugglers and hippies has become a big business, dominated by a few large corporations. Pot for Profit, traces the cultural, historical, political, and legal roots of these changing attitudes towards cannabis. The book also showcases interviews with dispensary owners, bud tenders, and other industry employees about their experience working in the legal cannabis industry, and cannabis reform activists working towards legalization. Mello argues that embracing the profit potential of this drug has been key to the success of cannabis reform, and that this approach has problematic economic and racial implications. The story of cannabis reform shows that neoliberalism may not be an absolute barrier to social change, but it does determine the terrain on which these debates must occur. When activists capitulate to these pressures, they may make some gains, but those gains come with strings attached. This only serves to reinforce the totalizing power of the neoliberal ethos on American life. The book concludes by meditating on what, if anything, can be done to move the cannabis legalization movement back onto a more progressive track.

This captivating book will broaden your understanding of Crime, with:

- More than 100 ground-breaking accounts of true crime
- Packed with facts, charts, timelines and graphs to help explain core concepts
- A visual approach to big subjects with striking illustrations and graphics throughout
- Easy to follow text makes topics accessible for people at any level of understanding

The Crime Book is a captivating introduction to the world's most notorious criminal cases, aimed at adults with an interest in the subject and students wanting to gain more of an overview. Here you'll discover more than 100 sinister accounts of true crime through exciting text and bold graphics.

Your Crime Questions, Simply Explained

This fresh new guide explores the most twisted accounts of crime and criminology in history. If you thought it was difficult to learn about the most prolific wrongdoings and the criminals behind them, The Crime Book presents key information in an easy to follow layout. From outlaws like pirates, bandits, and highwaymen, to serial killers and the cyber criminals of the 21st century, discover the worst felonies through superb mind maps and step-by-step summaries.

The Big Ideas Series

With millions of copies sold worldwide, The Crime Book is part of the award-winning Big Ideas series from DK. The series uses striking graphics along with engaging writing, making big topics easy to understand.

Since the 1970s, anti-violence advocates have worked to make the legal system more responsive to gender-based violence. But greater state intervention in cases of intimate partner violence, rape, sexual assault, and trafficking has led to the arrest, prosecution, conviction, and incarceration of victims, particularly women of color and trans and gender-nonconforming people. Imperfect Victims argues that only dismantling the system will bring that punishment to an end.

Amplifying the voices of survivors, including her own clients, abolitionist law professor Leigh Goodmark deftly guides readers on a step-by-step journey through the criminalization of survival. Abolition feminism reveals the possibility of a just world beyond the carceral state, which is fundamentally unable to respond to, let alone remedy, harm. As Imperfect Victims shows, abolition feminism is the only politics and practice that can undo the indescribable damage inflicted on survivors by the very system purporting to protect them.

In this groundbreaking, powerfully reasoned, lucid work that is certain to provoke controversy, Harvard law professor Randall Kennedy takes on a highly complex issue in a way that no one has before. Kennedy uncovers the long-standing failure of the justice system to protect blacks from criminals, probing allegations that blacks are victimized on a widespread basis by racially discriminatory prosecutions and punishments, but he also engages the debate over the wisdom and legality of using racial criteria in jury selection. He analyzes the responses of the legal system to accusations that appeals to racial prejudice have rendered trials unfair, and examines the idea that, under certain circumstances, members of one race are statistically more likely to be involved in crime than members of another.

A powerful critique of mass incarceration by the people who have experienced it

Inside Knowledge is the first book to examine the American prison system through the eyes of those who are trapped within it. Drawing from the writings collected in the American Prison Writing Archive, Doran Larson deftly illustrates how mass incarceration does less to contain any harm perpetrated by convicted people than to spread and perpetuate harm among their families and communities.

Inside Knowledge makes a powerful argument that America's prisons not only degrade and debilitate their wards but also defeat the prison's cardinal missions of rehabilitation, containment, deterrence, and even meaningful retribution.

If prisons are places where convicted people are sent to learn a lesson, then imprisoned people are the ones who know just what American prisons actually teach. At once profound and devastating, Inside Knowledge is an invaluable resource for those interested in addressing mass incarceration in America.

A thorough and engaging look at an unexpected driver of changes in the American criminal justice system

Driving is an unavoidable part of life in the United States. Even those who don't drive much likely know someone who does. More than just a simple method of getting from point A to point B, however, driving has been a significant influence on the United States' culture, economy, politics - and its criminal justice system. Rules of the Road tracks the history of the car alongside the history of crime and criminal justice in the United States, demonstrating how the quick and numerous developments in criminal law corresponded to the steadily rising prominence, and now established supremacy, of the automobile.

Spencer Headworth brings together research from sociology, psychology, criminology, political science, legal studies, and histories of technology and law in illustrating legal responses to changing technological and social circumstances. Rules of the Road opens by exploring the early 20th-century beginnings of the relationship between criminal law and automobility, before moving to the direct impact of the automobile on prosecutorial and criminal justice practices in the latter half of the 20th century. Finally, Headworth looks to recent debates and issues in modern-day criminal justice to consider what this might presage for the future.

Using a seemingly mundane aspect of daily life as its investigative lens, this creative, imaginative, and thoroughly researched book provides a fresh perspective on the transformations of the U.S. criminal justice system.

Shortlisted, 2024 Stephan Russo Book Prize for Social Justice
A Ms. Magazine Most Anticipated Book

An original argument that the answer to mass incarceration lies not with experts and pundits, but with ordinary people taking extraordinary actions together--written by a leading authority on bail reform and social movements

From reading books on mass incarceration, one might conclude that the way out of our overly punitive, racially disparate criminal system is to put things in the hands of experts, technocrats able to think their way out of the problem. But, as Jocelyn Simonson points out in her groundbreaking new book, the problems posed by the American carceral state are not just technical puzzles; they present profound moral questions for our time.

Radical Acts of Justice tells the stories of ordinary people joining together in collective acts of resistance: paying bail for a stranger, using social media to let the public know what everyday courtroom proceedings are like, making a video about someone's life for a criminal court judge, presenting a budget proposal to the city council. When people join together to contest received ideas of justice and safety, they challenge the ideas that prosecutions and prisons make us safer; that public officials charged with maintaining law and order are carrying out the will of the people; and that justice requires putting people in cages. Through collective action, these groups live out new and more radical ideas of what justice can look like.

In a book that will be essential reading for those who believe our current systems of policing, criminal law, and prisons are untenable, Jocelyn Simonson shows how to shift power away from the elite actors at the front of the courtroom and toward the swelling collective in the back.

Part of the fascinating Big Ideas series, this book tackles tricky topics and themes in a simple and easy to follow format. Learn about Crime in this overview guide to the subject, great for novices looking to find out more and true crime experts wishing to refresh their knowledge alike! The Crime Book brings a fresh and vibrant take on the topic through eye-catching graphics and diagrams to immerse yourself in.

This captivating book will broaden your understanding of Crime, with:

- More than 100 ground-breaking accounts of true crime
- Packed with facts, charts, timelines and graphs to help explain core concepts
- A visual approach to big subjects with striking illustrations and graphics throughout
- Easy to follow text makes topics accessible for people at any level of understanding

The Crime Book is a captivating introduction to the world's most notorious criminal cases, aimed at adults with an interest in the subject and students wanting to gain more of an overview. Here you'll discover more than 100 sinister accounts of true crime through exciting text and bold graphics.

Your Crime Questions, Simply Explained

This fresh new guide explores the most twisted accounts of crime and criminology in history. If you thought it was difficult to learn about the most prolific wrongdoings and the criminals behind them, The Crime Book presents key information in an easy to follow layout. From outlaws like pirates, bandits, and highwaymen, to serial killers and the cyber criminals of the 21st century, discover the worst felonies through fantastic mind maps and step-by-step summaries.

The Big Ideas Series

With millions of copies sold worldwide, The Crime Book is part of the award-winning Big Ideas series from DK. The series uses striking graphics along with engaging writing, making big topics easy to understand.

Are you a law enforcement officer who struggles with writing clear, concise, and effective reports?

Are you a supervisor or trainer who needs to make sure rookies and trainees write better reports?

Then this book is for you.

THE POLICE REPORT FORMULA addresses the common problems when writing reports, especially with the challenges of modern policing. This practical, adaptable framework ensures clear, concise, and effective reports and will help you become a better, more well-rounded, more complete officer and more aligned with your purpose. You'll not only enrich your career but also enhance the lives of the people you serve.

What this means to you:

● Write reports more quickly and efficiently

● Communicate better at work and in your personal life

● Reduce stress, connect with your purpose, and increase job satisfaction

● Save time, enhance job security, and further your career

● Easily improve your writing skills

As a result, you spend more time in the field, doing what you love, serving justice better, and less time stuck at a desk.

Great reports mean great results:

● Police reports can (and have) literally saved lives.

● Good reports lead to less stress, improved job satisfaction, and better performance.

● Better job satisfaction and less stress lead to improved mental health for officers.

● Being in the best possible frame of mind makes your job safer and more secure.

Follow THE POLICE REPORT FORMULA and see the difference in your day and the impact you make as you help elevate law enforcement.

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