The Wire: Life Doesn’t Imitate Art
Everyone with access to keyboard and a thesaurus suddenly has to write about The Wire, a show that I have loved since the first season. Like a longtime Red Sox fan, I feel that I have a proprietary right to the team. Neveretheless, I have to admit that I found much of the writing about the dramatic arc, character development and so forth very illuminating. (Though I do think there has been insufficient attention paid to Omar – clearly the coolest guy on this, or any, show).
When the discussion veers into the deep implications of the show for social policy, however – and especially whenever I hear any of David Simon’s yammering – I have to suppress a gag reflex. It’s true that the show humanizes lots of violent, disturbed people. On balance, this is probably a good thing, and a service to society. But this TV show is very, very far from being a useful playbook for how to deal with urban problems.
Imagine if Carcetti had accomplished the following for Baltimore: more than halved overall crime rate, murder rate and number of people on welfare. Do you think David Simon would consider him to be a good fictional mayor? Well, Giuliani actually did this for New York. Do think that was a tougher or easier challenge than doing this for Baltimore?
He didn’t do this by creating New Hamsterdam Avenue on the West Side or “reforming the inhumanity of capitalism” or whatever. He did it by being smart, tough and relentless about getting results. He put more cops on the street, managed them better, and enforced laws. He transformed the rules, procedures and expectations of welfare offices to focus on getting people into work.
He summed up his philosophy toward New Yorkers, including those analogous to the characters on The Wire, simply: “One City, One Standard”. This is not a new idea. Another great mayor, of Athens, once put it this way: “We… place the real disgrace of poverty not in owning to the fact but in declining the struggle against it.”
This is hopelessly naive. First of all, it should be apparent to anyone who thinks for a second that urban renewal is a much tougher challenge in Baltimore than in New York. New York City, even at it’s worst, was still the financial and cultural capitol of the United States. The much of the middle class left, but when the fortunes in the city improved, there were many booming industries—in technology, television, art, film, consulting, law, education, to name just a few— for them to come back to. Baltimore, needless to say, is not New York. It’s got a nice aquarium. Much of its middle class consisted of good blue-collar industries centered around manufacturing and the ports, and these have since disappeared or been severely downsized. And they’re not coming back.
The biggest flaw in this post, though, is the repetition of this seductive myth that Giuliani single-handedly eliminated crime in New York City. (To be fair, credit should actually go to Bratton, who Giuliani fired in a bit of jealous pique (there’s a Wireesque moment), since Bratton was the real mastermind behind the strategies and was publicly taking credit for them). In any event, crime statistics clearly show that rates were already declining under Dinkins, due to a variety of factors, like long incarcerations of offenders, the tailing off of the crack epidemic, etc. Giuliani took all the credit for what was already a nation-wide trend because of his aggressive and publicly savvy branding of Bratton’s techniques. He deserves credit for presiding over this period well, and I’ve no doubt he helped, but he can hardly be credited for bringing it about. If this were true, than places where NYC policing strategies have been tried since then would be achieving the same success New York did, and, to use pre- and post-Katrina New Orleans as a good example, this is clearly not the case.
— jsa · Jan 3, 07:23 PM · #
Do think that was a tougher or easier challenge than doing this for Baltimore?
Using homicide as a proxy, this article (http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/local/crime/bal-te.md.ci.homicides30dec30,0,4917727.story) suggests that it was easier than taming Baltimore. In specific: ““Baltimore has a singularly challenging street scene, and that’s what makes it so dangerous and so resistant to crime-fighting steps that seem like they should work,” said David Kennedy, director of the crime prevention program at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York. Kennedy studied crime in Baltimore in the late 1990s.”
The article indicates that murder per 100K in NYC is now 7, or only 25% of what it was in 1990. (1990 is the peak year, some other story indicates.) That’s a truly remarkable achievement, and I’m happy to believe that Giuliani played some significant part in it. But the murder rate in Baltimore has stayed constant, apparently, and, at 40 per 100K, it’s substantially higher than anything NYC had to deal with.
— SomeCallMeTim · Jan 3, 07:43 PM · #
jsa / SomeCallMeTim:
It’s funny, but I’m very familiar with Kennedy’s writing. Here is the summary at the close of the article that you cite:
Crime experts say that there’s no reason Baltimore can’t experience the major drops in homicide rates of other cities.
It’s about identifying the groups that drive the violence in the communities,” Kennedy said. “And it’s about working with law enforcement and social services and the community to change that behavior.
In other words, hard, creative work is required.
Interestingly, in this article, there are also some quotes from relevant Baltimore government officials:
Mayor Sheila Dixon, said there is far too much attention on numbers – that even one murder is tragic. Dixon said the city’s homicide rate is “not a fair assessment” of whether Baltimore is safe.
and
It portends to be a law enforcement problem,” Fahlteich said of the homicide rate. “But having spent 15 years in homicide, I am convinced that it is a socioeconomic problem.
and
It’s outrageous, what we tolerate”, said Baltimore State’s Attorney Patricia C. Jessamy.
This sounds like exactly what I heard form NYC governments for many, many years – Don’t blame me, it’s just too hard to do my job
— Jim Manzi · Jan 3, 08:30 PM · #
In other words, hard, creative work is required.
I think that understates the problems Baltimore faces (and probably ignores underlying differences between the cities). As I understand it, homicide rates dropped by half nationwide. That suggests to me that specific local programs are not the sole, or even most significant, driver of decreases in murder rates. I think Douthat pointed to an article attributing about 25% (it may have been 15%, but 25% backs out nicely) of the drop in murder rates (it may have been crime) to Giuliani. As Douthat noted, 25% is a pretty big achievement. But note that even if Baltimore received the 25% Giuliani cut in it’s murder rate due to smart governance, it would still have 30 murders per 100K. That is, the murder rate would still be higher than it was at its worst in NYC. There’s something (or somethings) else going on there as well.
None of which is to say that you need to accept Simon’s specific diagnosis or prescriptions. I don’t particularly (and I remain unclear whether Ed Burns does).
— SomeCallMeTim · Jan 3, 11:05 PM · #