The Daily Zeitgeist - Crime Is Down, Private Equity Profits Are Up 06.18.24

Episode Date: June 18, 2024

In episode 1694, Jack and Miles are joined by Executive Director of Civil Rights Corps and author of Usual Cruelty, Alec Karakatsanis, to discuss... Prisoners Need “Stamps” For Email? Awful Crime Reporting and more! Elon Musk's Juiceless "Emergence" LISTEN: Better Hate by Jessica PrattSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

this welch's fucking cocktail shit is so it's just so weird because you can tell like there's like a nostalgia play here yeah where it's like no they made the can look exactly like the fucking welch's shit that i used to drink in like it's fucking weird like when are they gonna like i feel like we're right around the corner from juicy juice like there's gonna be like juicy juice malt liquor yeah yeah remember that shit oh my god you know if they did a fucking capri sun destroy with capri sun and it wouldn't even matter trans a capri sun vodka bone marrow transplant. That's what we need.

But I mean, like, you can just tell, like, they're just sort of using these, like, because the Sunny Delight, I think, was the canary in the coal mine. Yeah, yeah. When Sunny D came out with their vodka thing, I was like, this is, I'm, we're pretty, Squeeze It's is going to have to be next or something. Right, Gushers. And guess what? Vodka-infused Gushers. Oh. I say, oh, like, I'm, we're pretty squeeze. It's is going to have to be next or something. Gushers. And guess what? Vodka infused gushers. Oh, I say, oh,

like I would, I mean, do they have, they probably have CBD gummies that are gushers, right? Oh, maybe THC. Probably.

I mean, the gummy game, even the one that I meant to say when I said, yeah, I'm, I'm hip and I do the drugs. I mean, I remember like in the early days of like sort of like weed edibles there would be like the you know ganja nestle crunch bar like kind

of evoking these old brands and stuff yeah i actually haven't seen welch's is like very specifically associated with little children yeah wellch's feels like preschool snack time. Yeah, their ads were straight up like a kid who couldn't pronounce all their words being like, I like grape juice. Grape juice, yeah, exactly. They'll be like, and you won't be able to talk either after you have five of our vodka transfused grape juice. 20 years later, I love grape juice too.

I like grape juice. I'm wasting off grape juice. I like grape juice. I'm wasting off grape juice. Off that Welch's vodka transfusion. I'm Jess Casavetto, executive producer of the hit Netflix documentary series, Dancing for the Devil, the 7M TikTok cult. And I'm Clea Gray, former member of 7M Films and Shekinah Church. And we're the host of the new podcast, Forgive Me For I Have Followed.

Together, we'll be diving even deeper into the unbelievable stories behind 7M Films and Shekinah Church. Listen to Forgive Me For I Have Followed on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Gianna Pradenti. And I'm Jermaine Jackson-Gadson.

We're the hosts of Let's Talk Offline from LinkedIn News and iHeart Podcasts. There's a lot to figure out when you're just starting your career. That's where we come in. Think of us as your work besties you can turn to for advice. And if we don't know the answer, we bring in people who do, like negotiation expert Maury Tahiripour. If you start thinking about negotiations as just a conversation, then I think it sort of eases us a little bit. Listen to Let's Talk Offline on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

I'm Keri Champion, and this is Season 4 of Naked Sports. Up first, I explore the making of a rivalry. Kaitlyn Clark versus Angel Reese. Every great player needs a foil. I know I'll go down in history. People are talking about women's basketball just because of one single game. Clark and Reese have changed the way we consume women's sports. Listen to the making of a rivalry.

Kaitlyn Clark versus Angel Reese. On the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Presented by Capital One, founding partner of iHeart Women's Sports. Hello, the internet, and welcome to season 343, episode 2 of Dirt Daily Zeitgeist. A production of iHeart Radio. This is the podcast where we take a deep dive into American shared consciousness. It is Tuesday, June 18th, 2024. Happy birthday to my wife.

Oh, okay. No time for that though, Miles 6-18-3-6 The devil equals 18th The 18th day of June 4-6 breaks up Into 24, which also When you turn the 6's upside down

4-9 equals Rolling in that 6, foe And everybody's saying it Everybody's saying it It's also National Spurs Oh National Spurs Day National Go Fishing Day There's a reason we're speaking this fast folks Don't worry it's not because we're on that Biden crank

Yeah I just got that State of the Union Good good trucker speaking We're smoking on that Biden pack To get us real fucking fucking ham right now. Yeah, yeah, yeah. My name is Jack O'Brien, a.k.a. Potatoes O'Brien, and I'm thrilled to be joined, as always, by my co-host,

Mr. Miles Gray! Yes, it's Miles Gray speaking at the speed of light, trying to be like Joe Biden doing the State of the Union address. It's also the Lord of Lancashire, a.k.a. the Shogun with no gun, because I got no gun problems. Miles Gray, thank you. Miles Gray, thank you. Miles Gray. Thank you for,

for being here. And Miles Gray, we are thrilled to be joined by the executive director of civil rights court, which is a nonprofit dedicated to fighting systemic injustice. It's been a civil rights lawyer, a public defender named 2016 trial lawyer of the year by public justice, author of several books, the incredibly compelling usual cruelty, which we've had him on to talk about before.

He's got one coming maybe this year. Most importantly, a great follow on Twitter and all the social medias. Just kidding. That's not most important. But please welcome back to the show, the brilliant, the talented, Alec Karakatsanis! Alec! What's up, Alec? Hey, up y'all thanks for having me back thank you for joining here and the reason we're talking like auctioneers is because we only have you for 45 minutes so we wanted to get right into it y'all sound great thank you man revved up man

just trying man just getting through it just getting through it just know some people from the biden white house House and they've got some daddy's little helpers is what they call them. No. It's amazing to have you back. We usually do search history underrated, overrated, but I think we can just

skip that unless there's something you desperately want to get off your chest that you think is overrated or underrated or something from your search history? I don't have anything I'm dying to tell everybody, I don't think. Okay. Okay, good. Then we'll ask the questions. We'll ask the questions here, Alec. All right. So last time we checked in with you, there was a little over a year ago, or maybe actually a little less than a year ago, but there was a lot of talk in the mainstream media still about how crime was up because everyone defunded the police.

And there's been an emerging story that crime has been plummeting, much, much less popular story with the mainstream media. And I'm pretty sure there hasn't been like a corresponding, like the police were never defunded. So like their theory of the case seems to have been exposed as bullshit. So presumably the mainstream media has been flooded with articles explaining what they got wrong and taking a long, hard look at their methodology. How are you seeing these latest crime statistics where crime has gone down? I think it's important first to just take a step

back and understand that whether we're talking about last year or the year before or the year before that, overall levels of police reported crime in this country are near historic lows. So even when there was all that frenzy about retail theft and shoplifting or car theft or violent crime or robberies, you know, we were still at a stage in history where all of those things were extraordinarily low relative to, you know, what they were, let's say, in the 90s or in the early 2000s. And it's also important to understand that when you hear about crime statistics in the news, it's really only seven or so crimes that the police track and report to the FBI. And even then,

most people don't understand that like 40% of police departments don't even report that data to the FBI. So a lot of it is just like FBI statistical estimates based on the police reporting like a few what they call index crimes. So what is left out of crime statistics? Well, almost all the crimes committed by police themselves, almost all the crimes committed by jail and prison guards guards almost all white collar crime right so while you hear a lot about theft in the news and retail theft and shoplifting what don't the police report and what doesn't fbi report when it's time up crime rates um tax evasion or uh wage theft you know and wage theft is about $50 billion a year. So that right there is three times all of the crime that FBI is reporting as property crime combined. And so you just have to understand

that the way the media talks about crime statistics is really messed up on like a lot of different levels. Yeah, wage theft and tax evasion being two crimes that the general populace, the readership, the intended audience of the mainstream media are the victims of. Those are the ones that get ignored. The ones that get breathlessly reported are the ones where Procter and Gamble is the victim. And that's treated as the more important crime. And I think this is really important lesson for people. Like you can really mislead people by giving them a few anecdotes. So for example, if you have like a week of news stories, even if the anecdotes you're giving are true, like you report on seven

true examples of shoplifting from Walgreens every night, you give the people the impression that shoplifting is a huge problem and might be increasing even, right? It's kind of like if I compiled a video of every shot Michael Jordan missed in his career, I put them all together. This guy stinks. Yeah, you could create the impression

that Michael Jordan is a terrible basketball player just by taking all of the shots, which he actually did miss, right? If you don't show the other shots, right? And what the news is doing is something very similar. It's not showing the public any of the tax evasion or any of the wage theft or any of the pollution violations, right? There's 100,000 violations that we know about of the Clean Water Act every year. It causes enormous death, cancer, rotting teeth, children suffering from a variety of different preventable illnesses, et cetera, those are not treated as urgent. And so there's this, and they're not reported

on the daily news. And so just through its reporting of anecdote, even if those anecdotes are actually happening and true, the news can distort our much deeper truths about like what kinds of activity is really harmful to us. And, and shoplifting is a good example because tax evasion is about a trillion dollars a year. So that's, you know, 60 times every property crime, the FBI reports combined. And, and yet everyone is freaking out over shoplifting and nobody's thinking about tax evasion. Right. I feel like the shoplifting thing is still like vibrating through like my childhood neighborhood. Like there are people who like lived in the neighborhood I grew up that are still harping

about like, well, you know, there's nothing at CVS anymore because all the shoplifting and like, we need to have like a neighborhood meeting about this. And it's like, dude, this is like a, this is like a two-year-old conservative take on crime that you're like now being like it's it's happening and we it's the scourge of our community at the moment but like i'm curious for this stuff that you're talking about like where is there like a centralized place where you can see like where like da's or something are reporting things like wage theft or like in a centralized place so i can be like well what about this stuff or is that more just having to be really vigilant about what is actually coming out of the courts and things like that?

Yeah. I mean, unfortunately, one of the big scandals of our time is that the agencies who are supposed to be investigating a lot of these crimes have been completely decimated. So for example, the federal antitrust regulators have been completely decimated there are far fewer regulators even looking into whether companies are doing price fixing and and doing all kinds of illegal stuff that drives up the costs of goods for consumers etc than there were 40 years ago we have fewer people investigating that stuff now and the same is true with the so-called war on drugs right they shifted a huge percentage of federal agents who were working on things like white collar crime, fraud, corporate fraud, tax evasion, et cetera. And they shifted

government resources toward the drug war. And so there's just fewer people actually even looking for the crimes that are committed by wealthy people. And that means that unfortunately, a lot of the crimes that are happening just like aren't even brought into the legal system at all. And so they're not being reported by prosecutors, not being reported by police at all. And so we rely on nonprofit organizations, really good investigative journalism. Sometimes the government will itself investigate in some ways that shed some light on some of these things and you have to cobble it all together yeah it's yeah i mean it you realize too just how much of that is

just to kind of emphasize what you know sort of the status quo wants to even define as crime well it's like well don't look at that stuff because then all these other people get caught up in our perception of what criminality is and we we absolutely don't want to do that. It's to actually just be like, no, no, it's the shoplifters. It's these kinds of things that are big capital C crime that we need to worry about when you feel like everyone's saying these are the ones like these other things are the things that affect the everyday person on a much deeper level. We're the victim. They locked up Old Spice at CVS. Also, we're the victims there.

They locked up Old Spice at CVS. Also, we're the victims there. I do not want to wait 15 extra seconds to get my Old Spice deodorant out of the plastic case. It's embarrassing to say I want Axe. Anybody using Old Spice is a victim anyway. Yeah. Oh, yeah. We're just going to pretend you didn't say that. What about Axe?

I smell great. And it's a combination of Axe and Old Spice. I mix it together. It's a home blend. The Axe is the new, the Old Spice is the old. And that's why I smell great to myself. Not everybody agrees. But yeah, it's a great, what crimes we talk about, what crimes we actually report is a great way to understand what our society actually values. And it seems like this is yet another place where we find out that we value corporations and corporate earning more than individual human beings and individual human lives. But I think it's important to understand that the people who tell you that they are tough on crime, law and order people what those people are actually meaning by that is they are sort of ruthlessly punishing some crimes committed by some people

some of the time and gleefully ignoring other crimes committed by other people other times so like in general when you hear someone who's tough on crime and, and law and order, what they mean is like, they want to enforce a lot of very minor crimes against the poorest people in our society. And they want to create conditions under which wealthy people can violate the law with virtual impunity. That's what law and order actually has meant in the U S political system for the last 50 years. Right, right. That kind of like what you're talking about sort of remind me another thing you posted about representing these kids in Flint and just sort of how, again, another example of like just sort of really going after vulnerable people in society for other people to make a ton of money, where like these kids and how courts have been set up to sort of keep children from visiting

parents that are awaiting trial and things like that. Can you talk a little bit about that case and sort of what's happening there? Yeah. So all over the country over the last 10 years, and I want to say up front, this happened well before the COVID pandemic, but, you know, over the last 10 years or so, many hundreds and maybe even thousands, it's really hard because it's hard to count, but many hundreds of jails at least have eliminated the ability of children to visit their parents. And we started getting complaints about this from our clients all over the country saying, I'm not able to hold my child's hand. We got complaints from children saying, I want to look into my mom's eyes or hug my dad. And so we started looking into what's going on.

And we started looking at the contracts that these jails are signing. It turned out that starting a little over 10 years ago, there was all these contracts with jails and private equity-owned, multi-billion dollar... Hey, private equity. Private equity rears its head private equity whenever they come up we have to have a drink because yeah they are the fucking scourge of

this country proceed it's really remarkable honestly when I talk to even other people in private equity nobody can quite believe what I'm about to tell you but yeah the the two largest jail and prison telecommunications companies are owned by private equity and they've created a situation where

sheriffs get uh what is essentially a kickback to ban children from from visiting their parents in jail how does this work well the theory is if you stop kids from having free in-person visits with their parents families will be so desperate that they'll spend more money on phone and video calls into the jail and of course these companies negotiate monopoly contracts with each sheriff and each jail to charge exorbitant rates per minute for phone and video calls. So the rates are like those 900 numbers from the 80s. They're like crazy, the amount that they just gouge people. That's unbelievable. And keep in mind that most people who are in jail in the United States are awaiting trial. They're not convicted. They're presumed innocent.

And because the United States and the philippines are the only two countries in the world that use a for-profit commercial money bail industry to determine who's in jail and who's not in much of the country most of the people that we're talking about in these jails are only in jail because they can't pay a certain amount of cash bail to get released if not because any judge has found them to be dangerous or a risk of flight or anything like that. So we already are taking the poorest people in our society, and then we're taking the children

of the poorest people in our society, and we're saying to them, we're going to jail you because you're poor, and then we're going to prevent your children from visiting you and prevent you from visiting your mom and your dad for free and if you want to see them you're or or or talk to them you're going to have to pay exorbitant rates to do sort of a really really shitty equivalent of facetime or phone call and you know it has all these glitches, it freezes, it's not private, it's all surveilled and recorded. And so now we've got these huge databases of the faces and voices of hundreds of thousands of children across the country that can be monetized. It can be AI algorithms can be

trained on these children's faces and voices that can then be sold. We don't have a good sense of what they're doing with all this, but it's all part of a scheme to kind of profit off of family separation. Yeah. It's like in some places too, like, aren't there like sort of like tablets that these companies create? So they're like, yes, if you want to download music, like that's another fee we can collect. Like they found a way to sort of like monetize sort of all of this information that goes in and out from prisoners. And a lot of people don't know that, that, you know, people have heard of private prisons, but what people don't realize is public jails and prisons, everything in them essentially is now privatized for profit. So there's tablets. If you want to, if you want to watch something or,

or read an email, you have to pay for stamps to send an email but a lot of places they're not even getting physical mail anymore so you can't even send your mom or your dad a card or a letter they get scanned and then and you have to pay to to review them on your tablet that they give you food toilet paper soap medical care you know you want to see a nurse or a doctor, you've got to pay for it. Jesus Christ. The entire system here is, you know, they don't give you blankets. It's very, very cold. If you want an extra blanket, you've got to pay for it. Essentially, you know, prisons and jails are huge cash cows for local, state, and county governments and for the companies that are sort of parasitic on these governments. And so we're representing an amazing group of children in Michigan who are

trying to make a very simple argument. And that argument is that in our society, under our constitution, and given our history as a civilization and as a country, children have the right to hug their parents. Children have the right to be around their parents. They have the right to hold their hand. They have the right to talk to them. And if the government wants to take away that right, it has to have really good reasons.

So maybe there are good reasons in any particular case. But the government can't just ban all children from visiting their parents and so it can't be the default exactly and that's what these kids these kids are really courageous and it was a real honor a couple weeks ago i was in court with my colleagues and we were arguing the case against the telecom companies and the sheriff and the courtroom was just packed with kids and packed with elderly people too because you know another sort of silent thing that happens a lot in our society is that older people whose whose own children are incarcerated as adults who depend on their children to take care of them in their life you know who are getting who may be

relatively lonely who may need help navigating, whether it's how to sign up for healthcare or how to understand things that are happening. Like there's a lot of older people too, who, who are really harmed by the inability to communicate with their loved ones and they're jailed for a few months or four years. Anyway, so there's a lot of older people that showed up to saying, we have this right too. It's not just, it's not just children, it's it's families really have the right to communicate with each other. And if you're going to take away that right, you better have really good reasons. equity one of these private equity firms that is backing another one of these telecoms companies that deal with prisons eventive it's like that guy who owns that who runs that firm is the guy who owns the detroit pistons and it's just wild to see like how people in our society are like

it's the it's the great owner of our beloved basketball team who's profiting off of this like heinous uh industry at the moment it's really, it's like- Dystopian. It's just like so in front, yeah, and it's just so right in front of your face. Yeah, and to the idea that it's like, yeah, we're gonna commodify the desire of families, their need to communicate with each other through this already exploitative system

that we've created to extract even more money from people. Let's take a quick break and we'll come back. We'll keep talking about this. We'll be right back. I'm Jess Casavetto, executive producer of the hit Netflix documentary series Dancing for the Devil, the 7M TikTok cult. And I'm Clea Gray, former member of 7M Films and Shekinah Church. And we're the host of the new podcast, Forgive Me For I Have Followed. Together, we'll be diving even deeper into the unbelievable stories behind 7M Films and LA-based Shekinah Church, an alleged cult that has impacted members for over two decades. Jessica and I will delve into the hidden truths between high-control groups and interview dancers,

church members, and others whose lives and careers have been impacted, just like mine. Through powerful, in-depth interviews with former members and new, chilling firsthand accounts, the series will illuminate untold and extremely necessary perspectives. Forgive Me For I Have Followed will be more than an exploration. It's a vital revelation aimed at ensuring these types of abuses never happen again. Listen to Forgive Me For I Have Followed on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Gianna Pradente. And I'm Jemay Jackson-Gadsden. We're the hosts of Let's Talk

Offline, a new podcast from LinkedIn News and iHeart Podcasts. When you're just starting out in your career, you have a lot of questions,, how do I speak up when I'm feeling overwhelmed? Or can I negotiate a higher salary if this is my first real job? Girl, yes. Each week, we answer your unfiltered work questions. Think of us as your work besties you can turn to for advice. And if we don't know the answer, we bring in experts who do, like resume specialist Morgan Sanner. The only difference between the person who doesn't get the job and the person who gets the job is usually who applies. Yeah, I think a lot about that quote. What is it? Like you miss 100% of the shots you never take. Yeah, rejection is scary, but it's better than you rejecting yourself. Together, we'll share what it really takes to thrive in the early years of your career

without sacrificing your sanity or sleep. Listen to Let's Talk Offline on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Keri Champion, and this is season four of Naked Sports, where we live at the intersection of sports and culture. Up first, I explore the making of a rivalry, Kaitlyn Clark versus Angel Reese. I know I'll go down in history. People are talking about women's basketball

just because of one single game. Every great player needs a foil. I ain't really near them boys. I just come here to play basketball every single day and that's what I focus on. From college to the pros, Clark and Reese have changed the way we consume women's sports.

Angel Reese is a joy to watch. She is unapologetically black. I love her. What exactly ignited this fire? Why has it been so good for the game? And can the fanfare surrounding these two supernovas be sustained? This game is only going to get better

because the talent is getting better. This new season will cover all things sports and culture. Listen to Naked Sports on the black effect podcast network iheart radio app apple podcast or wherever you get your podcast the black effect podcast network is sponsored by diet coke and we're back so yeah oh yeah so i was just saying so alec i know like there's only like a handful of states right that have actually stopped like done away So, yeah. I'm imagining that is sort of the path, at least that is the path towards progress for the states to sort of outlaw this practice within their own prison systems. I think there are a few things at different levels.

So, first of all, people like the owner of the Detroit Pistons should not be profiting off of monetizing human contact. And it's been alarming, honestly, to see the silence of the NBA and a lot of the players around this. I'm not sure how many of the players know about it. And one of the goals here is to make sure that we're talking about these issues openly and that people should be talking about these issues so that we can make social decisions collectively about what kind of policies we want. And so I think to answer your question about what kind of policies we want, like, you know, I think at different levels of generality, these policies could be, yes, of course, companies shouldn't be profiting off of monopoly priced, exorbitant phone and video calls for people in jail or prison. So there are a lot of cities in particular around the country that are starting to make calls free. There are some state

prison systems that are making calls free. There's an organization called Worth Rises that is leading a lot of that advocacy, and they're really great. But at a deeper level, we have to be asking much more difficult questions about how did this system of incarceration get so big, right? I mean, this country is putting Black people in jail cells at six times the rate of South Africa at the height of apartheid. You know, we're jailing all people in the U.S. like six times more than we did even just 50 years ago. And so when you do that, there's a lot of opportunity to make money. A lot of people's jobs start depending on it. And one of the consequences of this is that every single year, several million kids have a mom or a dad or parent who are incarcerated. And as a society,

we have not reckoned with the incredible effects that has in the short, medium and long term on trauma, on child development, on future crime, on future economic possibilities, et cetera, et cetera, mental health. And so I think a deeper reform is asking much more profound questions like, why are all these families being separated in the first place? Are there really good reasons that these parents are in jail, that these children are being jailed, that these families are being separated? Or are there other ways that we can address underlying problems that actually don't involve family separation? So one of our goals with our case is not just eliminating the profit steering and allowing free visits, et cetera, et cetera,

but it's actually thinking about what kinds of government policies are better for families, are better for public health than mass incarceration. Right. Yeah. Question we're still wrestling with. Yeah. Are we seeing any positive, like progressive reforms to policing and criminal justice around the country that you feel

kind of encouraged by? I know there were, you know, some initial ideas, a Denver program that would route 911 calls to an unarmed response team, like when the potential offense was not violent. Are you, what are you hearing that is actually kind of giving you hope in terms of just reform to this horrific system? I don't want to sugarcoat it. We're at a pretty bleak time because both the Democratic Party and Republican Party have embraced this copaganda kind of fear-mongering punishment is the answer to everything mantra and so as a result the environment for reform has become really poisoned but but but i i think without being too pollyannish i think there are some really incredible things happening that are

very exciting to me at least number one you have to understand the incarceration rate has gone down significantly in the last 10 years. I think we're at a moment where there are a lot of people that want to start incarcerating more people again. But the incarceration rate has gone down at least 10% overall. So that's a couple hundred thousand people that were imprisoned who are not now. people that were in prison who are not now. There's been some really profound beneficial effects on poor families and Black families because of that. And we can't, you know, we shouldn't gloss over that, even though the rhetoric and the narrative is getting a lot worse. And the Democrats and President Biden are proposing 100,000 new police and massive increases in police surveillance and border patrol and the militarization of police. And things are getting relatively bleak.

But the movement to reduce the size and power of the punishment bureaucracy and the companies profiting off it over the last 10 years has had some successes. Another success is we've seen in a number of places reforms to the cash bail system. There are cities like Los Angeles. There are places like California generally, Illinois, Massachusetts, New Jersey. New York is a great example. Dramatic increases in pretrial release,

reduction in the use of cash to determine who's incarcerated and so we are seeing like you know hundreds of thousands of people who would have been detained because they're poor every year in the united states who are now being released and that's another thing to be really encouraged by for people who aren't familiar with the cash bail system, I mean, people are held because they don't have access to money like that. That's straight up. You are jailed because you're poor in a lot of places in the country. And there's been a pushback against that. That is, it sounds like we're seeing some results. So that's great. Yeah. And there's a lot of propaganda about it, right? So we know from, this is one of the most rigorously studied areas in the criminal law. We know that releasing more people prior to trial actually reduces crime because when you jail people for even a few days or weeks, they lose their jobs. They interrupt their mental health medication. They sometimes lose their kids. They lose their housing. And so when

you destabilize someone's life, you actually make them more likely to commit crime. So if you want to reduce crime, you actually need to be reducing the use of pretrial jailing. And so we're seeing that. And in some of our cases, for example, our case challenging the misdemeanor money bail system in Houston, Texas has released over 100,000 people over the last six or seven years. And researchers from around the country at Duke University, University of Houston, other places are studying that University of Pennsylvania. And what they're showing is remarkable. Not only has the county saved 10s of millions of dollars in the economy has saved hundreds of millions of dollars, but crime is going down as a result of the decision to just stop jailing people in low

level cases because they can't pay 100 or 200 bucks meanwhile the thing that i feel like i've heard is catch and release these liberal activist da's are you know contributing to the a rise in crime so that's great to hear i just wish it was being more widely reported yeah it's like climate science denial there's a whole industry for decades that was relatively successful That's great to hear. I just wish it was being more widely reported. and and punishment bureaucrats generally because if you dramatically reduce the people in incarcerated pre-trial you actually do something much more profound you take away a lot of the leverage that the system has to get people to plead guilty because most of the guilty pleas in this country are caused by people being incarcerated and just desperate to get out right so they come to court and they're they're given a deal like if you plead guilty today

get out right so they come to court and they're they're given a deal like if you plead guilty today you won't investigate your case you won't get a lawyer to fight it you you know you won't you know get a trial in front of jurors but uh you will get out today and you will owe us a fine and this is how the system churns right and but if you if you get people out right away and they can fight their case a lot of people don't want to plead guilty because it turns out that the police and prosecutors can't prove a large percentage of the cases that they bring. And so the people that actually fight their cases have pretty good results we're seeing. Like if you look at Houston, what used to be, you know, 84% of people pleading guilty in a median of three days in misdemeanor cases. Now in those same low level misdemeanor cases, only about a third of people are getting convicted

after they're arrested because they're out and they can investigate their cases. And it turns out like the cops didn't have strong evidence against them or the prosecutor can't possibly prosecute all these cases. So I think it's just, it's important to understand that there are kind of downstream consequences to things like whether we jail people pretrial or not. Yeah, right. And I guess also while we were talking about copaganda and that whole the media's role in that, you had a really interesting thread. Let's talk about the New York Times, which is one of your favorite topics on Twitter and one of my favorite things to see you tweet about was Nicholas Kristof's really wacky column about immigration. It's like, it's OK when I did it, but now I'm thinking maybe not so much for other people. And like this is kind of on the heels of like you're seeing articles about like, yeah, Democrats agree that something had to happen over at the border.

But like, you know what, but the asylum thing, maybe not a great, not a great moment. This Nicholas Kristof like column almost makes it feel like it's like, Hey liberal, it's okay. If we're just a little bit racist this time, you know, like it's that that's okay. Like, have you, I mean like right now, I think it's become such a huge issue talking about immigration, especially with the election coming up and Biden, you know, whether he's moving to the Times sort of writing this kind of nonsense that just sort of obscures like what the issues are and like maybe what America's actual role is in changing immigration and how to create a little bit more equity outside of our own borders? Yeah, I mean, I think Christoph is obviously a very silly person, but I think it's important to, you know, you can learn a lot by looking at what kinds of opinions appear in the New York Times. well-informed and well-meaning to get them to support stuff that is extremely violent and

contrary to their values and contrary to evidence a lot of the time and unjustifiable really and so there's sort of layers and layers of propaganda that the times kind of spews that i try to dissect in helpful and practical ways on social media and obviously in the Copaganda book that I'm publishing in a few months. But I think just to start with Christoph and immigration, this is an area that has been widely studied. There's a really important study that came out last year from Oxford in the UK, which showed that when liberal and center-left political parties adopt the rhetoric and even the policies of the right wing on immigration, they actually lose votes. They become less popular. They do worse in elections. That's a really profound, I think it rings true, obviously, but they've

quantified and studied this. And, you know, one of the things that this means is when you've got someone like Biden, who, who is adopting more and more outrageous kind of policies and immigration that that are more and more indistinguishable with the far right is advocating, it's very disorienting and confusing for a lot of voters. And for voters who are persuaded by all of that, what the research shows is that they're going to, if they're persuaded by that and they like that, they're going to vote for the real thing, not the political party or the person who they think is approximating that thing. And also a lot of people who would be excited about and organizing for Biden lose the energy and the momentum to fight for him if he is trying to be a bad approximation of the far

right. And so this general set of studies, which is not just studying the US, but studies center left political parties across Europe, is a really important insight. And I think it helps to explain why the Democrats have been so unsuccessful over the last couple of decades when they try to play into the underlying mythologies and narratives of the far right. So I think it's a really bad strategy for the Democrats. the far right. So I think it's a really bad strategy for the Democrats. If you care about Democrats winning, it's a really bad strategy to sort of like validate the myths like immigrants are hurting our, you know, depressing our wages and costing us jobs and all these things. No, they're not.

Right. Yeah. They're actually good for the economy and less likely to commit crime than other people. But yeah, I digress. true or else why would these self-professed liberals be doing this and so it not only like makes it harder for people to get excited about voting for biden and pushes people toward the right but it also validates the underlying arguments the right wing is making in people's minds yeah the this quote in particular from your kind of thread on christoph you said for many liberals the destruction wrought by global capitalism it's inequality it's starvation it's ecological degradation it's war it's authoritarian corruption etc is taken as a given like that feels right like it feels like a lot of the so-called liberal perspectives that i hear on social media or in the mainstream media,

they're basically conceding a lot of the shit that far-right people are saying. So how are you going to get any enthusiasm or energy behind your messaging when you're basically like, yeah, what they're saying is basically right. We just are only pretending it's not. But, like, I don't know. It's like, I always talk about how they treat idealism and progressivism as childish, essentially.

Like, it feels like their overall strategy. I think one of the most powerful forms of propaganda is the type of propaganda that makes us feel like a better world is not possible right and that's when you when you can achieve hopelessness in a population you can do a lot of things to them and so the the theme underlying a lot of what christoph has been writing recently which you know unfortunately now people send me because i've written these threads i've got to read a lot of this new christoph just dropped yeah yeah exactly and you know it's like watching a small child emerge from the wilderness having ever been you know or having been raised by right-wing wolves he he's just sort of regurgitating random quotations and lines that don't really make any

sense and and and i think the core of it all is like the world is really messed up uh global warming is happening all these other countries have these problems we're going to omit the part about how you know the role the united states is playing and creating those problems but we're not going to even talk about like what might a different set of policies be to reduce global inequality to reduce global violence to reduce reduce global starvation to improve the environmental sustainability in other parts of the world we're not going to talk about any of those things what we're going to do is we're going to build walls and we're not gonna even talk about any of those things what we're gonna do is we're gonna build walls and we're gonna protect our castle and everyone who made it in before you know november 17th you know 2008 or you know march 27th you know 1994 depending on how how right wing

you are you have different ideas of like what counts as a pure american or what off date yeah exactly yeah you see now india has this is not just the united states right the sort of right-wing uh fascist ruling party in india has a new set of laws that um unless if you're muslim unless you entered india unless you have documents showing that you entered prior to a particular day in 1971 then then you're no longer considered an Indian citizen. You're subject to mass detention and deportation, even if you and your parents were all born in India. The United States is doing something similar. And the idea is, you know, we have to close off our borders rather than work together with other people in the world to make the whole world better. And inherent in this is a deep form of not just racism and jingoism, but a really powerful

conception that conservatives have as a center of the worldview. And a lot of liberals don't want to acknowledge it as being very central to their own view as well. But this idea that some people's lives are worth more than others and that is at the core of u.s foreign policy and anybody who talks about things like open borders who talks about things like you know addressing the problems of the world holistically for impoverished people and vulnerable people, for animals and plants the world over. Those people are ridiculed and pilloried

as sort of naive dreamers and impractical people. I think what Christoph is doing here is he's giving a lot of liberal people permission to think and believe those things because someone else who says they're liberal is saying them. Right. It's,

it's more appetizing when Christoph uses these words in the New York times than it is when Trump says something like lock them up, build the wall. Right. Yeah. Yeah. It's like kind of the difference, like when Trump's in office, like the New York times is like racists are people too.

And then like when Biden's office, when Biden's in office, the New York Times like, look, it's okay if we're just a little racist as a treat. You know what I mean? Because it's always at the end of the day. Yeah, it's just about sort of maintaining that sort of status quo. And I think because like, American imperialism is sort of like at the top of that, like, why, why bother to examine what the actions are of the United States as it relates to like immigration? I always think like, being someone who grew up in LA and like all the hand-wringing about like

MS-13, I'm like, have you gone back a little bit to understand like where, like why we have MS-13? It's because of the US government's intervention and backing like right-wing groups in El Salvador during their civil war. Yet we just want to treat it like as this thing in a vacuum, like, oh my God, and these people are coming to our borders who we initially deported to then create the gang there. But yeah, there's just this always not wanting to sort of look at again, like what the real solutions might be, because they always involve dismantling these power structures that again, the people in medium power are meant to uphold. So yeah, it can be very frustrating. the people and media in power are meant to uphold. So yeah, it can be very frustrating. Well, Alec, I know we're losing you now. I feel like we could talk to you for three hours, but where can people find you, follow you, hear more from you? I'm on Twitter at Equality Alec. Who knows how much longer I'll be there? So I do have a newsletter called Alec's Copaganda Newsletter. And of course, our organization is really amazing.

There's over 30 people at the organization doing incredible civil rights work. It's called Civil Rights Corps, C-O-R-P-S. And you can find Civil Rights Corps on all the major social media places. You can find us on our website, civilrightscorps.org. And then at the beginning of next year, I'll be out with a new book called Copaganda,

which talks about all this stuff in much more detail. We'll probably have some kind of a book tour people can come to in different cities and just deepen the conversation that we have about how the media talks about things like safety and crime and justice. And I'm looking forward to talking with people all over about these important issues because we're entering a period of rising authoritarianism and this stuff's more important than ever. Yeah, absolutely. Well, thank you for

doing the work that you're doing and thank you so much for coming on. And yeah, would love to have you back again as soon as you have some free time we are miles and i are gonna take a quick break and then we'll come back to close it out we'll be right back i'm jess casavetto executive producer of the hit netflix documentary series dancing for the devil, the 7M TikTok cult. And I'm Clea Gray, former member of 7M Films and Shekinah Church. And we're the host of the new podcast, Forgive Me For I Have Followed. Together, we'll be diving even deeper into the unbelievable stories behind 7M Films and LA-based Shekinah

Church, an alleged cult that has impacted members for over two decades. Jessica and I will delve into the hidden truths between high control groups and interview dancers, church members, and others whose lives and careers have been impacted, just like mine. Through powerful, in-depth interviews with former members and new, chilling firsthand accounts, the series will illuminate untold and extremely necessary perspectives. Forgive Me For I Have Followed will be more than an exploration. It's a vital revelation aimed at ensuring these types of abuses never happen again. Listen to Forgive Me For I Have Followed on the iHeartRadio app,

Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Gianna Pradente. And I'm Jimei Jackson-Gadsden. We're the hosts of Let's Talk Offline, a new podcast from LinkedIn News and iHeart Podcasts. When you're just starting out in your career, you have a lot of questions like, how do I speak up when I'm feeling overwhelmed? Or can I negotiate a higher salary if this is my first real job? Girl, yes. Each week, we answer your unfiltered work questions. Think of us as your work besties you can turn to for advice.

And if we don't know the answer, we bring in experts who do, like resume specialist Morgan Saner. The only difference between the person who doesn't get the job and the person who gets the job is usually who applies. Yeah, I think a lot about that quote. What is it, like you miss 100% of the shots you never take? Yeah, rejection is scary, but it's better than you rejecting yourself. Together, we'll share what it really takes to thrive in the early years of your career

without sacrificing your sanity or sleep. Listen to Let's Talk Offline on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Keri Champion, and this is Season 4 of Naked Sports where we live at the intersection of sports and culture up first I explore the making of a rivalry Caitlin Clark versus Angel Reese I know I'll go down in history people are talking about women's basketball just because of one single game every great player needs a foil I ain't really near them boys I just come here to play basketball every single day and that's what I focus on. From college to the pros,

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be sustained? This game is only going to get better because the talent is getting better. This new season will cover all things sports and culture. Listen to Naked Sports on the Black Effect Podcast Network, iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. The Black Effect Podcast Network is sponsored by Diet Coke. And we're back. We're back.

And yeah. Wow. Alec Karakatsanis. Yeah. Always super enlightening. We had a bunch of other things we wanted to get to that we didn't have time to, but... Yeah.

Just that image of the inside of jails right now where like you get your ipad and you get your like little media device and then they're just like gouging you for yeah paid i mean like it'll be stuff like oh you want to listen to a song that's like two dollars and 30 cents yeah to listen to one song you know it's just again but it's also wild how how often we observe these like again like all of these things we observe in these like these systems of oppression they always eventually come for us and even in this version about like nickel and diming prisoners for every part of their existence like you see just bleed into other parts other industries where we

thought certain things were just like a given to us, right. Where it's like, you know, you know, like the shitty version is like, you know, an air travel where it's like, Oh yeah, you're back. We have to charge you for your backpack now. Right. It's like, what the fuck? I thought that's part of like the whole thing. But again, they found a way to sort of break down and, you know, find all these smaller opportunities to take more and more money from people and of course they're going to start with the most vulnerable groups first that being people that are incarcerated so yeah it's um that's sort of the pattern like continues to to repeat all the time and just like yeah that that that uh nicholas crystal thing is just so

wild too because like the whole the whole take of that, too, is sort of like, well, I benefited. He's like, I wouldn't be here if a family didn't, you know, what's the word I'm looking for? Not endorse, but like sort of support like our bid to immigrate here. Yeah. It's like but I don't know if I can say that system still works as well. But that's me. And I am better somehow for some reason. And I'm from Europe. My family was from Europe. And if you notice what we're doing, it's mostly people coming from the global

South. And that's the group that we it's OK if we are even more discriminatory towards. But yeah, I mean, the New York Times getting times gonna new york times yeah it is nice to hear some like slightly positive news about falling uh incarceration rates and you know so some of the things where we're actually making progress on cash bail and stuff like that yeah but well and i think his point is i think i was taken well at least for me like to look at it how there is still there's an entire alternate media universe built on climate change denial that the same thing would exist for anything about, you know, whether, whether or not we can improve, uh, the sort of human caging system we have now, or at least obscure any progress that's been made that would sort of

create additional momentum to truly have a reckoning with our carceral system. But yeah, it just takes so much more momentum to have a reckoning than it does to like all the exploitative, capitalistic things that is driving shareholder value, aka making wealthy people more wealthy. That stuff is the stuff that has the momentum and even if you kill it it will pop back up like jason vorhees you know that that's the stuff you have to like keep your eye on to make sure it's dead like yeah whereas like good ideas require the similar constant vigilance just to keep alive in this country at least at this point yeah but with people like him you know out there i don't know maybe maybe one day there will be some changes yeah there is that like in that i was reading

an article about the the you know the telecoms private equity thing and one of these people from the this guy paul wright who's from the human rights defense center like to your point he describes it about like, even when you try and address these things, he said, quote, it's kind of like stepping on a balloon. You squeeze it down in one place and it just bulges up somewhere else. And that's the problem we've got with these companies.

Problem or solution. It sounds like private equity is making cheddar. And that's what's cool. No, it sounds private equity. Yeah, that might be bad. We'll see see we'll continue to keep an eye on it who's gonna be like the first like celeb private equity apologist the first i'm sure i'm sure like a lot of companies that are but i mean like in this sense to try and get in front of it like it's like well allow me to explain why they're charging money you're like what the for real yeah i do i do feel like private equity knows that they're bad guys which is why like part like a major part of the strategy is to be hidden behind like 14 shell companies

you know yeah and so they're just like yeah no nothing to be nothing to see here we did get this endorsement from uh the spaceman, Kevin Spacey, but we think we're going to keep our powder dry on this one, actually. Yeah, 100%. But yeah, I mean, it did feel like that thing, because even on like the, sometimes in like those Red Lobster articles or other articles, like you started to see like CNBC and be like, and that's a problem with some of these private equity companies.

Like, oh. Oh, well. It's like, well, they're going to be the sacrificial lamb so we can then wash our hands and be like, we got rid of the bad apple. The tree remains. That's right. The Red Lobster for listeners who haven't listened to every single episode was undone by, among other things, but mainly private equity. Private equity. among other things, but mainly private equity. Private equity.

Sam has J.Crew, Toys R Us, KB Toys, many brands that you've- Friendly. Suddenly went bankrupt after being, five years before being incredibly successful and household names suddenly go bankrupt. Look and see if they got taken over by private equity, which is essentially an industry of parasitic companies that come in, charge the company, just find ways to extract money from consumers, from employers, from the companies they take over. And then when the companies go bankrupt, it's still good for them.

They still do great. Yeah. So anyways, I guess, I guess that's it. Miles, where can people find you, follow you, all that good stuff.

And is there a work of media that you've been enjoying? Find me at miles of gray on Twitter and Instagram. Find you there. Thank you. Thank you. And you can also find Jack and I on the basketball podcast. Miles and Jack. You can find me talking 90 day fiance on four 20 day fiance. Thank you. And you can also find Jack and I on the basketball podcast. Miles and Jack on my boosties.

You can find me talking 90 day fiance on 420 day fiance. A tweet. I haven't really been looking at the tweets. I was just mostly Hermasdy and I were just finishing Bridgerton. Oh, yeah. How do we do? Yeah. Yeah.

It's all right. You know, like there are a lot of times I, I can't remember the first couple of, Oh, maybe this could be a storyline. This could be, but it's all, it's always just very straightforward.

Like, you know, period era romance. So, um, yeah. If you're a Bridgerton fan, might as well complete it. You might as well complete it.

There you go. But, Oh man, but Cressida, whoo, fucking Cressida, man. I don't,

I don't know how I feel. I don't know if I feel bad for her or I feel like she should have really got it worse, but Hey, oh, man. But Cressida. Woo! Fucking Cressida, man. I don't know how I feel. I don't know if I feel bad for her or I feel like she should have really got it worse. But, hey. Yeah, man. It is what it is. I'm still trying to make up my mind. Cressida Cowper, man. Yeah.

Victim or villain. I think most people feel bad. What a name. Yeah. All right. You can find me on Twitter at Jack underscore O'Brien. A couple of things I've been enjoying on Twitter. Have you seen this video of Elon Musk emerging?

I think Wu Tang is for the children. Retweeted it. What? Emerging? Emerging from a chrysalis. No, just emerging at like being announced. And then he comes out and like is trying to like. I'll link off to it in the footnotes.

It is jane at jane ost underscore tweeted, he's being called the most juiceless man on earth. And it is a wildly earned description of what we're seeing. Wait, let me see this. Now I gotta see it. I can't leave it hanging. Send it. Where? Put it in the chat. So he mer seeing. Wait, let me see this. Now I gotta see it. I can't leave it hanging. Send it.

Put it in the chat. So he emerges. Oh, shit. Miles, I want you to prepare yourself. What was that flying jumping jack hold? What is this? He's a marionette? Yeah, he's like doing a weird marionette thing.

Oh my god, we're fucked. We're fucked. What is this? He's a marionette? Yeah, he's like doing a weird marionette thing. Oh, my God. We're fucked. We're fucked. I can't do it. That truly. It's so disturbing. I don't. Y'all have to watch it for yourselves.

But yeah, he like comes out. He does like a flying, jumping, like. Jumping jack flash? What do we call that? Yeah, he does a jumping jack flash. Exactly. call that yeah he does a jumpy jack flash exactly his shirt lifts up over his belly then he lands and like does a sort of like i got no strings the whole that's like yeah that's kind of he's doing like a weird puppet rogue puppet dance is that because he just got his money is that was that or is it just like another thing he showed i think

this is older than that but i i actually don't know. Oh, wow. Maybe not. Maybe it is. Maybe he just got his money and that is how he's going to touchdown dance on all of our graves. Oh, wow. Someone put, he's doing an X with his body. You stuck up self-righteous dumbass. In response to the person making fun of him? Yeah.

Wow. Keep it for him okay that's cool wow well he should work on hey mobility man it's all about mobility i think you could have got those heels further apart but hey who am i and then harry hill tweeted a picture of welsh's grape juice like an old welsh's grape juice commercial next to the new Welch's vodka transfusion drinks. And they said the Welsh's grape juice to Welsh's vodka transfusion pipeline is insane. And Puck at Puck Meat tweeted, pivoting from grape juice to alcohol is actually the most sane pipeline.

It literally happens on its own. Good point. I don't know if I like vodka transfusion. Yeah, I don't know why it needs to be transfused. I don't know why we need a medical procedure to happen. You could just call it

vodka-nated. Isn't that mostly a medical term? Yeah, transfusion. They're just trying to be cool about that? I'm like, yeah, it's a vodka transfusion. I're just trying to be cool about that? You know what I mean? Yeah. I'm like, yeah, it's a vodka transfusion.

I'm like, I don't know, dude. I'm thinking blood transfusions. Oh, man. I just got a nice transfuge from my young blood bag. Just a vodka transfusion? Yeah. Jesus. Wow.

Anyways, you can find me on Twitter at Jack underscore O'Brien. You can find us on twitter at jack underscore o'brien you can find us on twitter at daily zeitgeist we're at the daily zeitgeist on instagram we have a facebook fan page and a website dailyzeitgeist.com where we post our episodes and our footnotes where we link off to the information we talked about in today's episode

the most cursed celebration you've ever seen by elon musk we will also be linking off to that as well as a song that we think you might enjoy uh miles what song do you think people might enjoy um there's an artist jessica pratt who's a fantastic singer songwriter i like i remember really fucking with her first album like maybe this was like in 2012 and then i kind of like would hear about her here and there but then brian the producer was like yo have you heard the new jessica pratt album and i i peeped it she's doing like something i don't know her this album as he describes it which is a good description it's like feels like like tracks nancy sinatra would have made in her heyday but just didn't um and it has that sort of

style of production and her like she has just such an interesting voice and the way she uses it is really dope so this is a track from her new album which is called hearing the pitch this track is called better hate uh and this one is by jessica pratt all right we will link off to that in the footnotes the daily zeitgeist is a production of iheart radio for more podcasts from iheart radio is the iheart radio app apple podcast or wherever you listen to your favorite shows that is gonna do it for us this morning. We're back this afternoon, though, to tell you what is trending. And we will talk to you all then.

Bye. Bye. Hey, I'm Gianna Pradenti. And I'm Jermaine Jackson-Gadson. We're the hosts of Let's Talk Offline from LinkedIn News and iHeart Podcasts. There's a lot to figure out when you're just starting your career. That's where we come in. Think of us as your work besties you can turn to for advice. And if we don't know the answer, we bring in people who do, like negotiation expert Maury Tahiripour. If you start thinking about negotiations as just a conversation, then I think

it sort of eases us a little bit. Listen to Let's Talk Offline on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Jess Casavetto, executive producer of the hit Netflix documentary series Dancing for the Devil, the 7M TikTok cult. And I'm Clea Gray, former member of 7M Films and Shekinah Church. And we're the host of the new podcast, Forgive Me For I Have Followed. Together, we'll be diving even deeper into the unbelievable stories behind 7M Films and Shekinah Church. Listen to Forgive Me For I Have Followed on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Keri Champion, and this is season four of Naked Sports. Up first, I explore the making of a rivalry, Kaitlyn Clark versus Angel Reese.

Every great player needs a foil. I know I'll go down in history. People are talking about women's basketball just because of one single game. Clark and Reese have changed the way we consume women's sports. Listen to the making of a rivalry. Kaitlyn Clark versus Angel Reese. On the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Presented by Capital One, founding partner of iHeart Women's Sports.