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Public Education: Three Cheers for HBO's The Wire

By Jonathan Simor

As my wife has long pointed out, my ability to opine on American culture is sorely undermined by the fact that I haven't watched TV seriously since Twin Peaks went off the air. Even I however, have heard about HBO's The Wire, and the extraordinary job it has done over the last five years portraying the very high costs and limited successes of the war on drugs. For all these years, students who have taken my classes or heard me lecture have told me to that many of the issues we dealt with in class were being readily handled on HBO's The Wire. Now, ahead of tomorrow's final episode, the show's writers,David Simon (creator of HBO's The Wire), actor Ed Burns and novelists George Pelecanos, Richard Price and Dennis Lehane have published a clear and powerful letter in Time Magazine that summarizes (perhaps for many who missed seeing the show) the undeniable fact that the war on drugs has failed at stopping illegal drug markets, and has undermined those communities already harmed by drugs themselves...continue to full post

Full post as published by Governing Through Crime on March 08, 2008 (boomark / email).