Decryption | Down homicides: the “miracle” of Baltimore

(New York) Washington is only the start, warned Donald Trump. Other American cities must expect the deployment of the National Guard in their streets, including the three largest: New York, Los Angeles and Chicago.

“And then you, of course, have Baltimore and Oakland. We don’t even talk about it anymore. They are screwed up, “said the president, addressing journalists gathered in the White House press room last Monday.

Now, Donald Trump, these cities all, are all claiming success in the fight against crime.

This is particularly the case with Oakland. For a period of 25 days, at the end of last spring, no homicide was reported in this city of California where the number of violent crimes fell significantly in the first six months of the year.

But the case of Baltimore is perhaps even more remarkable.

By drawing inspiration from the “Boston Miracle”, a strategy which made it possible to reduce the homicide rate among young people in the capital of Massachusetts, “Charm City” by 63 %, nickname the first city of Maryland, is in the process of achieving its own miracle.

“Baltimore has gone from more than 300 homicides per year to 85 since the start of the current year. This is a remarkable change, “says Ben Struhl, director of crime and Policy Lab of the University of Pennsylvania, whose researchers support the city officials and stakeholders 62 km northeast of Washington.

“If someone says:” Well, I am skeptical about your data on crime “, I answer: Being skeptical about the data is a good thing in general. But we have very clear indicators that Baltimore is safer, and this number of homicides is difficult to question. »»

The fruits of a strategy

The irony wants the Donald Trump cuts to jeopardize the progress made on this front by Baltimore, Oakland and other cities, as we will see later.

In Baltimore, these progress is largely attributable to Brandon Scott. The latter won a first mandate at the town hall in November 2020 after having become nine years earlier, the youngest city councilor in the city.

In January 2022, this mayor now aged 41 launched the Group Violence Reduction Strategy (GVRS).

This strategy relies on the close collaboration between the police service, the state prosecutor’s office, community members and social services to “act directly with people intimately involved and affected by violence”.

In a typical intervention, police officers, community members and a representative of the town hall put a letter signed by the mayor to a close to a victim of a shots. This letter details both the social services accessible to the person and the judicial consequences that may cause reprisals to the shots.

The GVRS was first introduced in the WestSide district of Baltimore, the most dangerous sector in the city. During the first 18 months of its implementation, 90 % of the individuals most at risk of being involved in an event of shots, as victims or authors, accepted the services offered by the mayor, who range from support for housing to career development through the treatment of drug addiction or mental health problems.

During the same period, Crime and Justice Policy Lab from the University of Pennsylvania noted “a reduction of approximately 33 % of violence linked to firearms, 60 less victims and a reduction of around 33 % of car robberies” in the sector.

The fallout from the cuts

“What Baltimore did was actually very complex,” explains Ben Struhl. The city has developed a strategy involving several government services that had never really interacted before, shared with them indicators and results, and concentrated resources in order to respond effectively to the most urgent problems. »»

Three and a half years later, the strategy continues to give encouraging results. If the pace established since 1^er January is maintained, Baltimore will end the year with 143 murders, a rate of approximately 25 per 100,000 inhabitants, from unheard of to Charm City since 1978. It is still too much, as repeated by Mayor Scott, but it would be almost 200 murders less than in 2020, 2021 and 2022.

This decline is part of a national trend in the United States, where the homicide rate is on the way to falling at its lowest level in 2025 since 1965, or 12 per 100,000 inhabitants.

Other violent crimes are also down.

But Baltimore and other cities fear the fallout from the cups orchestrated by the Trump administration. From the first day of his second term, the president eliminated the office for the prevention of violence linked to firearms of the White House. Three months later, the Department of Justice reduced by half the US 300 million intended for community stakeholders who try to prevent group violence. And the social services offered as part of the strategies to reduce this violence have seen their budgets melt as snow in the sun.

However, the National Guard could be deployed in the streets of Baltimore, as in those of Oakland, New York, Los Angeles and Chicago, after those of Washington.

“I find it very significant that all the cities cited by the president have a black mayor,” said that of Baltimore last Monday on CNN. “And most of these cities are currently experiencing historically low violent crime rates. In Baltimore, we have recorded the lowest number of homicides so far (in 2025) for 50 years. Maybe we went too far. Too far from the faulty right -wing right -wing tolerance policies and all the measures that have not made our city safer during all these years. »»