>>213996445
Say what you want about David Simon but he didn't shy away from ascribing blame where it was due (e.g. the corrupt lawyer being very loudly Jewish, the use of "charities" in the Bahamas as money-laundering schemes, Avon talking a big game about respect and honor and then killing some guys so that he could get out of prison earlier, etc.).
The Wire is basically Marxist in its view of social problems being systemic. It's all connected; hence "The Wire" and the opening credits for each season depicting networks (either literal, physical cables or e.g. in Season 2 using ropes and cables).
>>213998383
It allows the players to get established and has impacts on the surrounding community in terms of increased rates of property crime, threats to safety, and sanitation. This is basically the model that a lot of North American cities adopted over the years.
Consider Vancouver, British Columbia; police do not arrest people for minor possession, and didn't disperse encampments that started to be set up; this was nominally for self-protection, but there's evidence to suggest that the drug dealers themselves facilitated it or were at least involved as coordinators between residents of the camps. These camps moved around and would be dismantled periodically. It concentrated some of the crime but had detrimental impacts on the surrounding neighborhoods. The Wire kind of shows this by having the old lady there, and maybe something like that could really work in Baltimore, but most other cities are not going to have the vacant land available to act as a buffer between citizens and drug addicts.
