MICHEL MARTIN, HOST:
Now, you might have missed it in the flood of end-of-the-year wrap-up stories, but there's a significant trend in 2025 that we wanted to spotlight. That's the drop in crime in many places over the past year, especially homicides. Baltimore is one of the cities that's seen real improvement. Homicides are down nearly 30% from this time last year. Other violent crimes are also way down. Nonfatal shootings have dropped by 25%. Carjackings decreased 36%. So what did Baltimore do right?
For answers, we called Thomas Abt. He's a professor at the University of Maryland who's been studying violence reduction strategies and advising community leaders about them for years. Professor Abt, welcome back to the program. Thanks for joining us once again.
THOMAS ABT: Good to be with you again.
MARTIN: Now, we've reported on this program that crime is down around the country. But even having said that, does Baltimore still stand out?
ABT: Yeah, I think it does. It's definitely in the upper range of cities in terms of crime and violence reduction. And I think there's a number of reasons for that. It's doing a number of things well.
MARTIN: So let's talk about what they're doing well. I mean, as I understand it, much of the approach in Baltimore is centered on the idea that urban crime is what you call sticky. What does that mean?
ABT: Well, when I say that our urban violence is sticky, what I generally mean is that it sticks together among small groups of people, places and behaviors. And as a result, the best strategies to reduce violent crime are sticky as well, meaning they're highly concentrated on the people and places that matter most.
MARTIN: Well, what does that look like in practice?
ABT: What it looks like in practice is you can identify those are at - who are at the highest risk for being shot or shooting because a lot of times, what you're trying to do is get ahead of the violence. Obviously, if someone commits a serious violent crime, they should go to jail. But what if someone is just grieving publicly about the death of a loved one and they're making threats about potential retaliation? Well, hard for law enforcement to intervene. So why not send a violence interrupter? Why not try to get that person some therapy? Why not connect them to victim services? That's the idea of teamwork and collaboration.
MARTIN: That's interesting because other cities have tried to combat urban violence by addressing what people call the root causes, like poverty or inequality, lack of opportunity. All of those things exist. But it sounds like you're saying something else. That doesn't sound like that. What's the difference there?
ABT: You know, I believe in addressing all of those root causes - poverty, inequality, lack of opportunity. But ultimately, as a violence researcher, I have to be honest. The connection between those and reduced violence is murky. What the science is telling us is if you want to reduce violence, focus on violence. Focus on the most violent people in the most violent locations, and focus on a few key behaviors that are highly associated with violence.
MARTIN: Going back to the - sort of the national picture, President Trump sent the National Guard to Washington, D.C., also to Los Angeles. He tried to send them to Chicago, saying that his intention is to combat violent crime. What difference would something like that make?
ABT: There's really not a lot of crime benefits to having the National Guard in particular patrolling streets. I think there's a lot of risks in terms of reducing community trust with this overmilitarized approach to public safety. Bringing in some 19-year-old kid who doesn't know the community and isn't trained to do actual law enforcement - that's not going to be particularly effective.
MARTIN: One more thing I wanted to ask you about is that - it's my understanding that the other thing that the city did is things like keep the rec centers open later, swimming pools in the summer and things of that sort. Is that part of it, too? It does seem to have some community benefit, giving people other things to do. Does that make sense?
ABT: It does make sense, and I think it does have a lot of community benefit. But it's pretty clearly not violence reduction, and there's no evidence to suggest that those types of general measures are going to have much, if any, effect on violence. Ultimately, the people who are at the highest risk for violence are not going to be engaging in those resources, unfortunately. And so we should do those things, and we should continue our attempts to reduce poverty and inequality and lack of opportunity. But let's also understand that if we're going to be effective in saving lives by stopping violence, we need targeted approaches in a separate lane.
MARTIN: Thomas Abt is a professor at the University of Maryland and the founding director of the Center for the Study and Practice of Violence Reduction. Professor Abt, thanks so much for talking with us once again.
ABT: It's been a pleasure. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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