Good News on Urban Crime

National Review Online

Wednesday, May 06, 2026

 

On X, on Tuesday morning, FBI Director Kash Patel celebrated the City of Baltimore’s recording just four homicides in the month of April, the lowest number since tracking began in 1970. This comes amid a broader decline of violence and criminality in the city. There were 10 percent fewer killings and shootings than at the same time last year. Homicides fell 61 percent between 2015 and 2025. Robberies decreased by 46 percent in the same time period after reaching a peak in 2017. This is no longer the city made infamous in television series like The Wire.

 

Baltimore has changed considerably since 1970, when it had over 900,000 residents. The city has seen major demographic decline, driven by crime and deindustrialization. Baltimore is now the 30th-most-populous city in the country, at around 570,000.

 

The recent reduction of crime in Baltimore has many causes, some of which apply to the nation at large and are reflected in similar drops in crime in Washington, D.C. Gentrification has played a larger role in Washington, D.C., but it is also happening in Baltimore. The median age in the country has increased by 4 percent in a decade, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. Most crime is committed by young men and men in their prime years.

 

As we’ve seen in other blue cities, dumping soft-on-crime prosecutors — in Baltimore’s case, Marilyn Mosby — and putting criminals behind bars gets results.

 

In 2022, Baltimore initiated its “Group Violence Reduction Strategy” in collaboration with the state’s attorney general’s office. This program focuses on incarcerating or otherwise removing the worst repeat violent offenders from the streets and directing resources toward those most at risk of gun violence. This approach has not only proven effective; it has won over support and cooperation from the communities most affected. The strategy short-circuits reciprocal patterns of gang violence. Baltimore receives a modest amount of federal funding for the GVRS program. Other programs, like the Real-Time Crime Center, which expanded the Baltimore Police Department’s use of security cameras to monitor crime, are also consistent with the improving numbers.

 

Baltimore Mayor Brandon Scott deserves credit for his aggressive approach to reducing the number of vacant houses, which have been a social and economic pox on the city. The former approach of selling houses for a dollar did little to decrease social pathologies. Instead, the city now moves on a block-by-block redevelopment approach with public-private partnerships. The number of vacant homes has dropped from 16,000 to under 12,000 since his election. Replacing urban blight with functioning neighborhoods will keep the revitalizing trends across the city going.

 

It all goes to show that progressive jurisdictions needn’t tolerate high levels of crime, if they are willing to jettison self-defeating permissiveness and lock up criminals.