In 2017, Baltimore saw an uptick in the arrests of juvenile offenders. Newspaper headlines warned of juvenile crime being “out of control.” Incidents in October of that year ranged from police finding a 15-year-old with a loaded pistol around the Inner Harbor to a group of Homeland trick-or-treaters having their candy stolen by teens — who pistol whipped an adult who tried to intervene. Given the city’s homicide woes (and the spike in violence overall since the 2015 Freddie Gray riots), the level of alarm was hardly surprising. But guess what was noticeably absent from the headlines? There was no call to oust then-Maryland Department of Juvenile Services Secretary Sam J. Abed or any criticism of then-Gov. Larry Hogan, a Republican now running for a U.S. Senate seat.

Now, here’s what makes this particularly interesting. In 2017, Baltimore averaged 198 juvenile arrests per month. This year, the average as of last month was 65. As observed in a recent analysis of Baltimore’s crime statistics, youth arrests have not only declined significantly, they make up a small percentage of overall arrests. The claim that youth crime is out of control in 2024 “is simply not true based on the data made available,” writes Joshua Rovner, director of youth justice for The Sentencing Project, a nonprofit that advocates for humane responses to crime nationwide.

Of course, critics are welcome to claim that police aren’t responding to juvenile crime or making arrests. But wouldn’t that be on their shoulders and not a state agency? Yet the call has gone out for Gov. Wes Moore to fire DJS Secretary Vincent N. Schiraldi, and it’s been reinforced by very specific, cherry-picked incidents with repeat youth offenders. The robbery and beating of a 66-year-old man near Patterson Park last month is typical of the episodes that have fed the outrage: The two teen suspects have prior arrests. Why weren’t they detained or at least electronically monitored? Or there was the case of the 15-year-old recently charged with attempted murder for a September midday shooting in Rodgers Forge, a Towson neighborhood unaccustomed to such violence. No one should be shocked if he turns out to have a criminal history as well.

So while we would never for a moment absolve DJS from its responsibilities to properly supervise offenders, what’s going on here seems more political than curative. Schiraldi, who formerly served as a senior research scientist at Columbia University and advised New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio on criminal justice (including a stint as the city’s corrections commissioner) has a reputation as a progressive reformer. Republicans hate this. No GOP state senators voted to confirm his nomination last year. His emphasis on “turning young lives around” rather than on locking them up for as long as possible offends their sensibilities.

Yet what Schiraldi claims to be seeking — a “balanced approach” as he recently told The Sun’s Darcy Costello — sounds about right. If you can put young people on the straight and narrow, isn’t that far better than having them break laws again and again and again? Rehabilitation has been proven to be effective — when it’s done right. But that’s also not to suggest that police, prosecutors and the courts have no place either. Not every offender can be turned around.

And sensible choices like requiring schools to share information about transfer students who committed serious crimes, as the state school board did just this past Tuesday, seem entirely appropriate as well. That simple rule might even have prevented the death of a 26-year-old found dead in a car in Columbia two weeks ago, as suspects include a 17-year-old who apparently faced criminal charges in another county before enrolling in Howard High School.

Too often our discussions about criminal justice mirror the black-and-white absolutes spouted by “get tough” politicians on the national level and not the shades of grey offered by reality at every level. But most of all, we simply would like to see greater context. In the long-term, juvenile arrests are down. Just as Mayor Brandon Scott’s approach to homicides (one that doesn’t seek to imprison more individuals but to prevent shootings from happening in the first place) is yielding positive results, we suspect a similarly balanced approach to juvenile crime can be successful as well since, as the last five years of statistics strongly suggest, some progress has already been made.