Baltimore families know too well the pain of gun violence that steals young people far too soon. Now a major new study from Johns Hopkins researchers brings a rare note of encouragement: the city’s Safe Streets program appears to be making a real difference for teens and young adults.
The study, published in the journal Injury Prevention, looked at 11 Baltimore neighborhoods where Safe Streets has operated between 2007 and 2023. Researchers found the program was associated with a 42 percent reduction in homicides among youth ages 15 to 24 and a 21 percent drop in nonfatal shootings. While the results did not reach the strictest level of statistical significance — largely because youth shootings are relatively rare events — the overall direction is promising.
Youth ages 15 to 24 represent just 13 percent of Baltimore’s population, yet they made up 37 percent of gun violence victims in 2023. That year alone, 73 young people were killed and 249 were shot but survived. These numbers hit communities hard, affecting families, schools, and entire neighborhoods.
Safe Streets is Baltimore’s version of the Cure Violence model. It sends trusted “violence interrupters” — often people from the same streets with their own past experiences — into the community to mediate conflicts before they turn deadly, connect at-risk youth with services, and help change the idea that violence is the only way to settle disputes.
“This is thought to be the first study to specifically examine how community violence intervention programs affect youth violence,” the researchers noted. That focus matters because young people have always been at the heart of the problem — and the program was originally designed with them in mind.
The Johns Hopkins team used sophisticated comparison methods to create “synthetic” versions of the neighborhoods as they might have looked without Safe Streets. They tracked trends over nearly two decades, accounting for everything from the unrest after Freddie Gray’s death to the challenges of the COVID-19 pandemic. Results varied by neighborhood: some areas saw large improvements, while a few showed increases. The authors say differences in staffing, leadership stability, and local conditions likely played a role.
Even so, the overall findings stand out. Earlier studies of Safe Streets looked at violence across all ages and showed mixed results. This new youth-specific look suggests the program may be especially important for the very group it was created to help — even as youth conflict patterns have changed with social media, easier access to guns, and shifting group dynamics.
For many Baltimore residents, the study offers more than numbers. It points to a different path forward — one that relies on outreach, trust, and support rather than arrests and incarceration alone. The researchers emphasize that more work is needed to strengthen the program, support its workers, and combine it with broader efforts to create jobs and reduce gun availability.
As cities across the country search for effective ways to protect young people, Baltimore’s long-running experiment with Safe Streets provides valuable lessons. The study’s authors call for continued investment, better program support, and ongoing evaluation so that more neighborhoods — and more families — can see the kind of progress these findings suggest is possible.
In a city where too many young lives have been cut short, even cautious signs of progress matter. This research adds important evidence that community-led solutions can help turn the tide on youth violence.
