Why Americans Should Be Watching The Wire

HBO recently released Season 4 of "The Wire" on DVD. I honored the occasion of its release by holing up in my house and watching all 13 episodes in the course of a couple of nights.

 

This type of behavior is a bit unusual for me. But, "The Wire"—which probes the complex entanglement of police officers, criminals, drug dealers, longshoremen, teachers, junior high students, and politicians in contemporary Baltimore—is more than your run-of-the-mill television show. Not only is it tremendously well-written and well-acted entertainment, but also it is a deeply thought-provoking sociopolitical critique of how public systems work (and don’t) in America.

 

In the course of its first four seasons, arguably "The Wire" has educated more Americans about COMPSTAT, the GIS-based tool for crime reduction pioneered by New York City and replicated in Philadelphia among many other U.S. cities, than every big city police chief or newspaper put together. In "The Wire," CitiStat, Baltimore’s iteration of COMPSTAT that tracks delivery of city services in addition to occurrences of crime, is brought to life for television viewers across the country. On a weekly basis in the show as in real life, commanding officers of designated districts meet with the police leadership to discuss the problems, devise strategies to reduce crime, and ultimately improve quality of life in their assigned area. Seeing the big picture, allowing district commanders flexibility in how they use their resources, and holding them accountable for outcomes are all good things. At the same time, "The Wire" also explores the tactic’s pitfalls—how its short-term focus deters the use of resources for larger-scale, longer-term police operations; how it alienates good police when their work is judged in terms of quantity, not quality, of arrests; how the drive for numbers encourages commanders to “juke the stats” by arresting riff-raff for what should be merely ticketable offenses in order to show they are meeting their targets.

 

In Season 4, exploring the exploitation of measurement tools is taken a step further when former Baltimore Police Officer Roland "Prez" Pryzbylewski becomes a Baltimore City Public School teacher. Though Prez is a math teacher, he is directed by school administration to focus on teaching language arts test questions to prepare his students for the upcoming state exam. When the preliminary results from the state exam come in, Prez is shocked to find that his students have improved in math and reading with a significant percentage demonstrating proficiency with the material. But the shock fades when his colleague clarifies that proficient means two years below grade level. Different public system, same response—juke the stats—this time by lowering expectations on proficiency.

 

Above all, "The Wire" is a show about systems, systems of crime, governance, and education. As such, it also explores the efforts of those within the existing systems to reform them. These reform efforts come in all shapes and sizes--criminal leader "Stringer" Bell tries to reform the drug trade so that there’s no need for violence; Police Major “Bunny” Colvin sets up a legalized drug zone that isolates dealers and junkies from the neighborhoods they’ve been holding hostage, and Colvin, again, pilots a program that separates out at-risk and disruptive students at the local middle school from their peers and teaches them a different curriculum with additional social support.

 

But the writers of "The Wire" are realists. They know that no matter how successful reform efforts are, the status quo cannot abide them. Whether it’s a rival criminal, a mayor needing a scapegoat, or a school district under scrutiny—our public systems excel most at resisting the changes they most need.

 

Can you think of another piece of entertainment that delves into public systems and their failings and makes you care about them on a visceral level? I can’t, and that’s why despite its violence, language, sex, and drugs, I wish that families, high school classrooms, and civic organizations would view it together and discuss what it means about us as citizens of our cities, our states, and our country. Charles Darwin wrote, “If the misery of the poor be caused not by the laws of nature, but by our institutions, great is our sin.” And "The Wire" teaches us that our institutions will not change unless there’s a broad base of people committed to changing them.

-- Alison Gold, Director of Strategic Initiatives