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Maybe you haven't heard, but there's this study conducted by two U.S. economists that found watching violent movies actually had a placating effect on violent criminals in society. The reason? It's stupefyingly simple: When would-be criminals are indoors watching movies, they are not out on the street committing crime.

"Economics is about choice," Prof. Gordon Dahl of the University of California, San Diego, told the media last week. "What would these people have done if they had not chosen to go and see a movie? Whatever they would have done would have had a greater tendency to involve alcohol. If you can incapacitate a larger group of potentially violent people, that's a good thing."

Given my rap sheet of petty social holiday crime, I read this report with keen interest. I am no real criminal, but I could be better behaved. Atonement was on my mind, and I don't mean the love story. It's January, I figured. Time to lie low.

Perhaps all I needed to quell my darker tendencies was a few nights at home on the couch with the first season of The Wire. I had read a lot of about this series - critically acclaimed but underappreciated at the Emmys, it sounded like a classic HBO extravaganza of gangsters, blood, nudity and bad language. Plus I figured that, according to the aforementioned research, renting it might be the best way to make my neighbourhood safer. I know. It was big of me.

An older friend of mine once said he thought adult maturity should be measured not in terms of milestones such as real-estate purchases, marriage, children or career achievements, but by the ratio of DVDs rented to DVDs watched.

He and his wife had recently had their second child and were in the midst of moving to a bigger house. According to him, they were operating at a ratio of five to one.

"If we have another baby," he said, "we might as well pawn the DVD player."

I have always resented this sort of thinking, because it suggests that unencumbered young people aren't capable of feeling as overextended and exhausted as responsible adults with families. We are. It's just that in our case it's usually the result of inertia and hangover, rather than quality time and the fulfilment of biological destiny.

All of this is to say that a week after renting the entire first season of The Wire (five discs in all), I was still halfway through episode four. The problem, I'm embarrassed to admit, is that I found it difficult to follow. I'm not at my sharpest when watching television. I go into a waking trance state that makes it hard for me to focus on intricate plotlines and technical explanations and (I now realize) decipher garbled Baltimore ghetto-speak.

One night, I watched with a friend who had seen the series before. I drove her so batty with my questions ("Who's that guy again?" "Which side is he on?" "What's he saying?" etc.) that she left early and biked home in a blizzard.

For several more days, I persisted, but two weeks later, I was struggling so badly with violent, libidinous television that I caught myself reading a serious novel as an intellectual break. It was time to give up and return the discs. My ratio: two to five.

The important thing was, I'd stayed inside, off the bottle and hadn't (thus far) committed any violent crimes.

I dropped the DVDs through the slot of the closest Blockbuster outlet and didn't think much more of it - until a week later, when I was browsing in my local independent video shop. I was feeling detoxed and well-rested and figured I might just give The Wire another go.

The guy behind the counter informed me they were out. Then he typed something into the computer and looked at me strangely.

"You're Leah, right?" he said.

I nodded.

"According to our records, it appears you still have the whole first season. It's three weeks overdue."

I had returned the DVDs to the wrong store.

I went straight home and called up Blockbuster. The anesthetized young guy on the phone claimed they had no record of any dropped-off DVDs meeting my description. "Listen lady," he said, after I got a bit shirty. "Are you sure you took them here and not somewhere else?"

I was sure. And yet, given my dismal track record (this wasn't the first time such a thing had happened), he had a point. I decided to bite the bullet and do the responsible adult thing. I went home and ignored the situation completely.

A few days later, I got a call from the independent informing me that it was charging the cost of the DVDs to my credit card.

I marched up to Blockbuster and demanded to speak with the manager. After hearing me out, he retreated to a back room and came back holding a stack of DVDs. "I think these are what you're looking for," he said, handing me the season of The Wire I had rented, lost, bought, found and now owned. He did not offer an apology.

My jaw clenched. My face flushed. I wanted to shoot someone in the leg.

Instead, I went home and watched some more violence on TV. Eventually, the feeling passed. These economists must be on to something.