Baltimore’s Safe Streets program linked to decrease in youth homicides, Hopkins study finds

Rochelle Johnson joined Baltimore’s flagship anti-violence program when the effort expanded to the Penn North neighborhood where she grew up.

To convince young men and boys at great risk of shooting someone or being shot to choose a different path, she treated them like she would her own children.

That meant setting them straight while addressing some of their fundamental needs — housing and school — or just being someone to hear them out.

“I talk to them like they’re my kids because they could potentially be my child,” Johnson said in an interview.

A Johns Hopkins University study widely circulated this week found that the work of Johnson and her colleagues at their Safe Streets site contributed to a 100% decline in homicides and a 62% drop in nonfatal shootings among young people.

Researchers with the university’s Center for Gun Violence Solutions cautioned that the results were not statistically significant because of small sample sizes.

But they also said it was still important to note that the study concluded that Safe Streets was associated with a 42% drop in homicides involving people ages 15 to 24 and a 21% reduction in nonfatal shootings among the same age group at the neighborhood level.

The study examined the first three years of each of the 11 Safe Streets sites across Baltimore. Researchers used city crime data along with Safe Streets geographic information to create a model that estimated the program’s impact, said Carla Tilchin, assistant scientist at the gun violence center.

Tilchin credited Safe Streets workers with contributing to a decline in violence even as young people have had easier access to guns and high use of social media, which could easily spark disputes.

“The world of community violence intervention has definitely gotten more difficult and unpredictable,” Tilchin said.

Not all are convinced of the effectiveness of Safe Streets.

Baltimore State’s Attorney Ivan Bates is so critical of the program, which he has described as secretive, that he cut ties with the agency overseeing it, the Mayor’s Office of Neighborhood Safety and Engagement, or MONSE.

But Mayor Brandon Scott’s administration has defended the approach, saying Safe Street employs credible messengers, some of whom have criminal records, to mediate disputes in their communities before they erupt into violence.

“At the end of the day, this study points to the fact that the work that Safe Streets does have value,” said MONSE Director Stefanie Mavronis.

Researchers, however, found wide discrepancies in violence across sites. While the Penn North site saw a 100% decrease in youth homicides over the studied period, for example, the Brooklyn site experienced an 89% increase. Several factors, including differences in policing, could have contributed to the varying results, according to the study.

Tilchin said she’s interviewed Safe Streets staffers in years past as part of qualitative research to understand such differences.

“What came out of that is that neighborhoods are really different,” Tilchin said. “Baltimore is a city of neighborhoods and the dynamics in places like Sandtown or Penn North where there’s public transit and people coming in or out are much different than places like Brooklyn and Cherry Hill which are much more isolated.”

On Monday, Johnson, now a site leader, proudly held up a certificate of service from the mayor celebrating that Safe Streets Penn North made it a year without a homicide. She recalled one young man who she said was destined for jail or death. With a little bit of support, he got his high school diploma and now works two jobs.

“It’s overwhelming rewarding,” she said Thursday. “To just save one person, it means a lot.”