(The Root) -- Is there a link between perpetually high unemployment rates in many inner-city communities and the so-called war on drugs? David Simon, creator of gritty urban TV series such as The Wire, The Corner and Homicide: Life on the Street, believes so. Speaking on a panel convened Aug. 16 in Martha's Vineyard by the W.E.B. Du Bois Institute  (which is led by The Root's editor-in-chief, Henry Louis Gates Jr.), Simon suggested that America's business elite seek to monetize the poor [4] by making money off of their incarceration [5] rather than investing in educating the poor so that they can get jobs.

"Now [America has] gone from, in my adult lifetime as a reporter, from not valuing the urban poor to actually giving them a very unique value," said Simon, who spent years covering the criminal-justice system as a Baltimore Sun reporter. "Which is to say, since we don't need them for work and we're not including them in our social and economic compact, [economic interests ask] what can we do with all these extra, untrained, disconnected bodies? Well, we can monetize them. How do we do that? Fight a war on drugs."

-- Sheryl Huggins Salomon

Hear more of what Simon had to say in the video below, and read his additional comments in the article, "As Jobs Vanish, Where Are Blacks Left [4]?"