Introduction
The Wire was a crime-drama television series that aired from 2002 to 2008. It mainly explored the community struggles of impoverished urban youth in America (through illegal drug trade). The producers of the series based it in Baltimore City, Maryland. Its narrative highlighted how the city’s police department struggled to contain the drug menace in the state. Although HBO aired more than four seasons of the series, this paper reflects on its third season, which follows the theme of the first season (illegal drug trade) in Baltimore (season two focused on drug shipment at the port). Although this paper mainly reflects on community struggles and conflict in the wire, it also focuses on showing how institutional failures create a cycle of impoverishment among America’s urban poor. The last section of this paper shows the lessons learned from the series.
Institutional Failures
The Wire shows how institutional failures and education system inadequacies have contributed to the growing social and economic challenges that affect the urban youth in America. For example, many people are aware of the high unemployment rate in the African-American community. Relative to this observation, Chaddha (9) says many young African-American men suffered from high unemployment rates before the 2007/2008 economic crisis (HBO aired the last season of The Wire before the crisis started). The Wire shows the unemployment reality by highlighting the link between institutional failures and community impoverishment. Supported by years of failing schools and government neglect, many African-American men have faced several social and economic challenges that have forced them to take part in the drug trade. For example, Chaddha (9) says, only 54% of African-American men had a job before the 2007/2008 financial crisis. Comparatively, about 75% of white males had a job during this time. The Bureau of Labor Statistics paints a grimmer picture of these struggles because it shows that after the recession, the level of unemployment soared in the African-American community (Chaddha 9).
Institutional failures outline the main theme of the series, which builds a narrative that indirectly shows how they contribute to the problems facing many young people in urban America. Overall, the wire shows how institutional failures have contributed to the disappearance of jobs and the impoverishment of urban communities. It also highlights how a “shady” world of politics supports incompetence in police investigations and inhibits police ineffectiveness through bureaucracy and excessive institutional control. The creators of the series also do not spare secondary institutional voices (or the lack of it) through media negligence (failing to highlight the important issues facing the community). Comprehensively, they show how institutional failures contribute to the problems facing the urban poor in America.
Community Struggles
Although indirectly tied to social and economic challenges of the urban poor, the wire shows how young and hopeless Baltimore men created powerful organizations from the illegal drug trade. Despite the unrelenting quest by the police department to stop the criminal activities of these organizations, the criminals change their business model by venturing into legitimate businesses (running from the law). Partly, the audience could understand what drives many of the young men into the illegal drug trade because institutional failures “conspire” to limit opportunities for the young men to thrive (institutional failures fuel community struggles and conflict in the Baltimore society). This relationship highlights the structure of inequality in America and the role of the “system” in contributing to the social and economic challenges of the urban poor. Relative to this observation, Chaddha (10) says, “Widespread incarceration of the urban poor aggravates economic inequality, masking the hardship in urban communities and producing a growing population of ex-convicts unable to find stable jobs to support their families.”
The challenges witnessed by the officers in managing the drug problem and the little success they make in prosecuting the drug lords instill a sense of hopelessness among the audience, who now begin to understand that the war on drugs may never be won. Although this is an unfortunate realization, it is interesting to watch how the police casually interact with street-level peddlers, and how they come to know one another in an endless string of arrests and releases. In fact, after watching several episodes of the third season, the arrests made at the street level become a “routine procedure” and do not seem to have an impact on either the police or the arrested drug peddlers.
Despite the merits of the arguments highlighted in this paper, it is important to explore the often thought about, but rarely spoken about, racial stereotypes that could affect how viewers understand the community struggles depicted in the wire. For example, Chaddha (14) says the series reinforces racial stereotypes about African-American communities and their perceived widespread involvement in criminal activities and drug use. Stated differently, at “face value,” the wire almost reinforces the belief that African-Americans are “lazy,” depend on welfare, and “lost” in a criminal world. However, after deeply assessing the series, the audience could understand how the show departs from this mentality to create a deeper understanding of the social and economic problems facing the community. Mainly, it shows that, unlike the popular belief that African-Americans are “authors” of their own struggles, forces that are beyond their control limit their prosperity.
Lessons Learned
After seeing the wire for the first time, one would easily assume that it is another television program showing urban life in the African-American community. However, after closely looking at the series, clearly, the program is more than that. Mainly, it shows how communities struggle to make a living and how law enforcers have trouble maintaining law and order in a culture characterized by high unemployment rates, murders, and “street mentality.” The series shows the difficulty in managing the drug problem from one perspective. In fact, it shows that using a “one-size-fits-all” approach would not work, as a long-term solution to the Baltimore drug problem. Instead, it shows the merits of using multifaceted, and sometimes unconventional approaches to managing the illegal drug trade. The multifaceted approach highlights several instances where the police manage conflict well. For example, in season three, a newly appointed police chief (Howard Colvin) instructs his officers to allow young drug peddlers to sell drugs in designated areas of the city (Hamsterdam) (Vint 80). He also says the police would arrest anyone selling drugs outside the designated zones. This approach is an unconventional method of managing the Baltimore drug problem and caused many controversies in the police department because some senior officers saw the intervention as illegal, while others saw it as an effective way of controlling the street gangs. Contrary to the expectations of the critics, the strategy reduces crime, but when senior officers learn about it, they force Colvin to abandon this strategy and resign from the department. Although the police abandoned the intervention, it highlights one instance where the police managed the conflict well.
Overall, the series shows the difficulties that law enforcers encounter in managing the illegal drug trade. For example, the officers make little progress in managing the drug problem by making street-level arrests. Therefore, they realize that they cannot make significant progress if they do not arrest the drug kingpins. Similarly, the audience understands that although the police may have limited successes in solving some aspects of the drug war, the trade still goes on. For example, if they arrest one drug lord, another one comes up. For example, towards the end of season three, with the help of some insiders, the police “destroy” Barksdale’s criminal empire by arresting its main players. Similarly, other gang members kill their leader (Stringer Bell). The end of this criminal empire seems like a significant success for the police because, since the start of the series, the police had always tried to infiltrate Barksdale’s criminal empire, to no avail. However, as the Barksdale Empire collapses, another one comes up (the Marlo gang) (Marlo 61). They continue the same criminal activities that their predecessors engaged in. Overall, the audience comes to understand that the drug war is a “zero-sum game” because different gangs fill the void left by previous criminals.
The endless strings of arrests, which aim to stop criminal activities in Baltimore city, highlight only one challenge faced by the police. The changing nature of criminal activities also highlights a different challenge that the police face. This challenge manifests in season three when Stringer Bell uses the money he got from the drug trade to do legitimate business. This way, he aims to “cover his tracks” by delinking himself from the illegal drug trade. However, his criminal past haunts him and later leads to his death before he could actualize his ambitions to transform the Barksdale Empire into a legitimate business group. Nonetheless, his quest to transform the business created a significant challenge for the police to link him to the drug business. Moreover, when the police tried to follow the drug money, they uncover a deep political connection between drug traffickers and politicians. This connection poses a unique challenge to the police department because they are unable to arrest the drug kingpins without associating the names of powerful politicians in the process. This challenge is not unique to the drug problem because it highlights the challenges that law enforcers face when they try to trace illegal money (laundered through legitimate businesses). For an aspiring criminal law practitioner, the wire shows the complexity of investigating criminal activities and prosecuting criminal gangs. Indeed, although the activities of such criminal gangs may seem simple, they are not. Therefore, adopting simple solutions to complex criminal activities is wrong. Overall, the series helps me to change my focus regarding how to approach criminal problems.
Conclusion
The Wire helps us to understand the complexity of crime and the need to approach it from a multifaceted perspective. Particularly, it is important to do so because the show helps us to understand crime through the perspective of community struggles, social inequality, and institutional failures. More so, the series helps us to understand how the drug war fuels these institutional failures and offers short-term remedies to community struggles. Although it is difficult to comprehend the connection among these facets of the society, creatively, the wire shows how social, political, and economic forces shape the lives of the urban poor in America. Indeed, although the series is mainly fictional, it does a better job in portraying real social problems among America’s urban poor than any other production series of its time.
Works Cited
Chaddha, Anmol. Why we’re Teaching ‘The Wire’ at Harvard. 2010. Web.
Vint, Sherryl. The Wire: Contemporary Approaches To Film and Television Series: TV Milestones TV Milestones, Detroit, MI: Wayne State University Press, 2013. Print.