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Notes -
Really good book. David Simon has an incredible knack for getting inside his subject's heads. He's almost so good that you have to wonder if he's making up at least some of his subjects thoughts.
I also found the murder clearance rate very interesting. Even though they targeted a 70% clearance rate, it turned out that only about four in ten murderers ever actually spent long periods of time in prison. I found that number a bit surprising, because it's really quite low. Just for kicks, I googled the clearance rate in 2020 and it's dropped even further since the 1980s. It's at around 50% nationwide and 40% in Baltimore! Quite a precipitous fall. If you're interested in some of the theories why it's fallen, Plain English did a fairly good podcast on it:
https://open.spotify.com/episode/0RZOSNqfvod10uM7rgqeI8
I hope you hear your thoughts on the Corner! And I'm sure you've already watched The Wire, but there's also We Own This City on HBO. It's about corrupt police in Baltimore, particularly after the murder of Freddie Gray. An outstanding show.
I did watch both The Wire and We Own This City. I enjoyed WOTC, but I think it's definitely a step behind The Wire.
IMO, part of what made The Wire great is it showed the good and bad of everything and everyone. Some cops are dirty or assholes, but others are good police, working hard to take bad people off the street. The urban drug dealers might be being subjected to some level of abuse by the police, and sometimes actually do good deeds, but they really are murdering people in their own neighborhoods by the dozens and employing children to sell basically poison on the streets. Some of the parents in these neighborhoods are good people trying to get by in a tough neighborhood, while others are willing to sell their childrens' food for more drugs or demand that their children become drug dealers to bring in money for them while they do no work. Criminal defense lawyers are of course necessary, but damn sure they knowingly pocket a whole lot of drug money, help out with money laundering, and basically request people to be murdered.
WOTC over-focuses on how bad the GTTF and a few specific cops are and basically ignores everything that caused them to be that way. Okay, they're corrupt and abusive, but most of their targets really are drug dealers, and we don't get to see what other bad stuff these drug dealers do. Arresting actual bad guys who don't want to go to jail is necessarily violent and unpredictable, but if you show the police that they will be randomly fired and prosecuted for any violence that doesn't go perfectly right, then of course they'll start refusing to do anything. But the show pays no attention to this dynamic and just portrays the cops as lazy jerks for not wanting to get out of their cars. The Feds are of course perfect angels trying to root out the evil police corruption, but who cares that they aren't really doing anything about the 300+ murders a year and rampant drug dealing.
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