Baltimore: How one of America's deadliest cities ended the war on drugs - with help from The Wire

Cabinet Blog Baltimore: How one of America's deadliest cities ended the war on drugs - with help from The Wire best cheap At one o’clock in the afternoon, DeAndre, a 32-year-old shop worker, ambled through a crowded Lexington market smoking weed he’d just bought from a dealer around the corner. A police car stopped at the traffic lights as he posed for photos, joint in hand, Nike T-shirt emblazoned with “Just Do it” in green letters. And then the officers drove on. This is Baltimore, where in a radical experiment, possession of drugs, prostitution and drinking in public have effectively been decriminalised by the state attorney, who says the police have bigger problems to deal with and that young black men should stop being sent to prison for petty crimes. “America's war on drug users is over in the city of Baltimore,” Marilyn Mosby declared. Baltimore was America's deadliest city by murder rate in 2019, according to FBI data, but is trying to shake the gritty image many British people came to know through the television series The Wire. Broadcast between 2002 and 2008, the cult show portrayed the frightening reality of inner-city life and crime in Baltimore, starring British actors Dominic West and Idris Elba. Fans may now feel a twang of déjà vu; Series 3 was an early adopter of decriminalisation through the city's fictional 'Hamsterdam' project. Last year, at the outset of the pandemic, Ms Mosby was so worried about the spread of coronavirus inside overcrowded prisons that she pushed through measures which also stopped prosecutions for trespassing, minor traffic offences and urinating in the street. Now, they are here to stay. “We leave behind the era of tough-on-crime prosecution and zero tolerance policing and no longer default to the status quo to criminalise mostly people of colour for addiction,” Ms Mosby said. “These low-level offences were being, and have been, discriminately enforced against Black and Brown people,” she added. Just 30 per cent of the population of Maryland is African-American, but they account for 70 per cent of all prisoners. Baltimore is still violent. An eight-year-old girl remains in hospital after being shot on Wednesday night at a family gathering. A ten-year-old girl was hit by a stray bullet in February while walking to a corner shop. A 14-year-old boy is facing murder charges after allegedly shooting his 15-year-old friend in the head after an argument. On the ground, the atmosphere can switch from relaxed to tense just by turning onto a different street. The street art is bright and vibrant, some of it paying tribute to Freddie Gray, who died in police custody and whose death sparked protests across America in 2015. But statistics show that things are getting better. The experiment, known as The Covid Criminal Justice Policies, has directed people towards public health authorities, rather than local jails. The prison population has fallen by 18 per cent, which officials say was to be expected, but violent crime also dropped by 20 per cent last year and property crime is down 39 per cent. Promisingly, gun arrests are up 37 per cent compared to the same time last year, according to one councillor. Non-prosecution is an idea that has been pushed by progressives for years - and was portrayed directly in The Wire.