The City of Baltimore achieved its third straight year of declines in gun violence in 2024 and its lowest number of homicides in more than a decade. There was also a massive reduction in non-fatal shootings, when people are injured by firearms but survive. In the past three years, there has been a 42% reduction in homicides and a 43% reduction in non-fatal shootings.

While a nationwide downward trend in gun violence contributed to these positive outcomes, the size and consistency of Baltimore’s reductions, which outpaced the national reductions, were also the product of an array of innovative, local initiatives. The Group Violence Reduction Strategy (GVRS), the Safe Street program, and other community violence intervention initiatives operated by the Mayor’s Office of Neighborhood Safety and Engagement all played a part.

The three years of decline in shootings match the start of GVRS, an initiative that uses data and intelligence to identify individuals at the highest risk of being involved in gun violence and prioritizes community intervention efforts with those individuals as well as focuses police enforcement on shootings. An academic evaluation of GVRS showed that the initiative was effective and a significant contributor to the drop in gun violence in the city.

Another initiative that was pivotal in reducing youth violence is the Thrive Academy, created by the State of Maryland’s Department of Juvenile Services (DJS). Thrive Academy is similar to GVRS in design. Youth under DJS supervision who have been identified as being at very high risk for gun violence are assigned a life coach from a community-based organization. Those coaches, who are able to gain participants’ trust because of their own similar past experiences, provide intensive interventions such as mentoring, case management, education support, trauma therapy and financial incentives.

In its first year, according to a state report, Thrive served 57 youth in Baltimore and 131 young people statewide. Only two of those 131 — less than 2% of program participants — became victims of shootings in the program’s first year, both non-fatal. Eighty percent of kids in the program did not get arrested for a subsequent gun offense.

Despite media attention and community concern to the contrary, according to the Maryland Coordination and Analysis Center, juveniles only accounted for 6% of homicide victims in Baltimore in 2024. Additionally, youth under DJS supervision in Baltimore City experienced a 75% decline in homicide victimizations and a 64% decline in non-fatal shooting victimizations.

My organization, the National Institute for Criminal Justice Reform, has provided technical assistance and training to both GVRS and Thrive. As part of our work, we have conducted training for life coaches and outreach workers, men and women from Baltimore who have similar lived experiences as the people they serve. The staff of Youth Advocate Programs, Roca and We Our Us are excellent at engaging some of the highest-risk and hard-to-reach youth and young adults in the city.

There are still too many shootings in Baltimore. So even as we acknowledge progress and celebrate success, we must also commit to going further and doing better. Both GVRS and the Thrive Academy can expand, improve and better coordinate with other violence reduction efforts. This year, 2025, Baltimore could see even greater declines in gun violence, fewer than 200 homicides and an increase in community safety in all its neighborhoods.

David Muhammad is the executive director of the National Institute for Criminal Justice Reform, a national nonprofit organization, based in California, that provides technical assistance and training for Baltimore Group Violence Reduction Strategy and Maryland Thrive Academy.