In 2018, Baltimore had 309 murders and the number of drug overdoses in the city increased by 275 percent from 2011 to 2017, according to the CDC. It marked the fourth consecutive year with the city’s annual homicide count above 300.
Whatever strategies city officials are taking to reduce violent crime are evidently not working.
At the core of these statistics are gangs. Like any good policy work, the symptom must be addressed with its cause. If the city’s leadership is serious about reducing the drug trade and homicide count, it must focus on addressing the reasons why young folks join gangs in the first place—not just on opening more prison cells.
Few people join gangs because they want to hurt others or disappoint their mothers. Most say that they joined a gang out of need for financial opportunity and a need for love and protection.
If the city can somehow address these fundamental human needs, young people will not be compelled to join gangs in the first place. The strategy needs to move from a state of reaction and surveillance to a state of prevention and wrap-around.
Baltimore is home to programs like ROCA and Safe Streets, but their impact on the macro scale remains limited. Each program is unique in its own way, but both use outreach workers to engage youth at-risk of street violence and connect them with education, employment and community involvement opportunities.
Both programs have been effective.
In 2018, across all of its sites in Massachusetts and Maryland, ROCA served 942 at-risk young men, 88 percent of whom recorded no new arrests, and 78 percent of whom stayed in the program. 267 were placed at jobs, and 298 enrolled in transitional employment.
A 2012 study by the Johns Hopkins Center for the Prevention of Youth Violence found that from July 2007 to December 2010, Safe Streets was associated with a 56 percent reduction in homicide incidents and a 34 percent reduction in nonfatal shootings in Cherry Hill.
Whereas ROCA operates across the city, Safe Streets only operates in four neighborhoods— McElderry Park, Cherry Hill, Mondawmin, and Park Heights, according to its website.
Safe Streets has been so limited, despite its success, because of its cost and funding model. In 2017, Drew Vetter, then the Director of the Mayor’s Office of Criminal Justice, estimated that each new Safe Streets site would cost $500,000 to install. Last year, Mayor Pugh said that the expansion of the program would hinge on the city’s ability to attract $10,000,000 in private donations.
At the end of last year, the state awarded a $2.5 million grant to the program and the Board of Estimates agreed to contribute $1.3 million in matching city funds. The Mayor’s office announced that Belair-Edison, Brooklyn and Madison-East End would be added to the program by the end of this year. The Living Classrooms Foundation opened the Belair-Edison site on April 3 and the Catholic Charities is slated to open the Brooklyn site in mid-May.
While the expansion is a step in the right direction, Safe Streets is still limited to a few neighborhoods because of funding and priority from City and State leaders. While $500,000 for each additional site may sound daunting, the cost of human life is far greater.
The city budget proposal for fiscal year 2020 increased funding for the police department by $14.4 million. With that money, the city would be able to open nearly 29 new Safe Streets sites. If the State matched those funds, the program could touch nearly every neighborhood in the city. The question is not whether the city or the State has enough money to do so; the question is whether they have the will and the wisdom to properly spend it.
Former U.S. Secretary of Defense James Mattis said to President Trump that "If you don't fund the State Department fully, then I need to buy more ammunition ultimately.” The same principle holds true on the streets of Baltimore. If street violence prevention programs are not funded fully, Baltimore will just have to buy more body bags.