The Wire

"Because it’s the lie that tells the truth. Because we have all these police procedurals here in the United States, I can give you a list of a hundred, they are a staple on network TV. Almost all of them, particularly the ones that have run for a long time, are nothing like our criminal justice system. It’s all detectives solving these crimes through picking up a hair. But our criminal justice system is tough. We have 5% of the world’s population and 25% of all the people incarcerated in the world. Our prisons are an abomination. Most of the people in those prisons are poor people of colour and poor white people. It’s not these middle class white people trying to commit insurance fraud. Nothing I’ve ever seen on television reflects this. Support Five Books Five Books interviews are expensive to produce. If you're enjoying this interview, please support us by donating a small amount . The Wire really told the story of the intense crime rise in major cities throughout the 80s and early 90s. And it told it like I tried to tell the story in Blue, it told it through characters, that is African-American kids on street corners trying to sell crack and getting involved in crack wars. 14-year-old kids with guns shooting each other was what it came down to, when their older brothers were in prison or dead. The cop characters were very real. The way that the Baltimore PD was policing was totally ineffective. They were still doing things that they had been doing for half a century. It wasn’t absolutely the way the criminal justice system really is, but it was extremely well done and therefore hugely entertaining because they were telling stories too."