Statistically Speaking

The word 'statistics' comes from a German school - established before the birth of Laplace - of treating demographic trends (initially just collecting them, which at the time was immensely novel - interpreting data and making projections would come later, and with great controversy - what hubris to presume that a mathematician had any real insight into God's ineffable plan! What black magic!) as a separate branch of study. The word 'statistics' basically means 'the study of states'; the recognition and (God help us) interpretation of national trends.

Baltimore isn't, strictly speaking, a state. It's in a state, possibly more than one (track two), but the statistics we're shown in the Wire almost all pertain to Baltimore as a whole. Whether they deal with crime or education - whether they deal with the murder rate or dropout rate or conviction rate or pass rate, they're basically the only means that the city's legislature has of assessing progress, or lack thereof. The system, of course, is tragically flawed; it wouldn't have been included by David Simon if it weren't. Individual police departments and schools are encouraged to 'duke the stats', in Roland Pryzbylewskey's word's, 'turning robberies into larcenies, assaults into petty infractions.' In other words, creating statistics for the sake of having statistical proof of improvement in policing, rather than actually improving the standard of service and protection the police force is able to dish out.

All this would be bad enough even if David Simon didn't address the fundamental removal from reality that crime statistics represent. No career politician or even senior police official has any real impression of what the worst parts of Baltimore are like beyond the impression statistics convey. If arrests are up, enforcement is up. If the number of thefts is down, they aren't being replaced by a huge increase in larceny, they're down, period. We're shown here how easy it is for a municipal body to avoid seriously dealing with an issue and instead offer cosmetic solutions; a wig fund for terminal cancer kids is infinitely cheaper than research grants, and brings in similar PR results as long as the oncologists keep their damn dirty mouths shut.