David Simon discusses this point specifically in a 2008 lecture at UC Berkeley titled "The Audacity of Despair": <https://yewtu.be/watch?v=nRt46W3k-qw https://

David Simon discusses this point specifically in a 2008 lecture at UC Berkeley titled "The Audacity of Despair": <https://yewtu.be/watch?v=nRt46W3k-qw https://yewtu.be/watch?v=nRt46W3k-qw> The statistics discussion begins at about 8 minutes, and continues for much of the discussion and Q&A. I'd seen that long before watching The Wire itself, and in fact the lecture was a large part of the reason I wanted to watch the series. (Poor quality audio and a very distracting speaking manner. Still very much worth listening to.)