Why Did the Murders Stop in Baltimore?:
The city had the standard problem: About 61 “gangs” accounted for just 1 percent of Boston’s young people but 60 percent of the homicides.
Armed with this knowledge, Braga and Harvard Kennedy School colleagues David Kennedy and Anne Piehl designed a strategy variously called Group Violence Intervention, focused deterrence, or “Operation Ceasefire.”
They gathered up the frequent offenders, well-known to police, and had officers issue a clear message: Violence would no longer be tolerated. Community organizations offered help—with jobs, records, and so on. But the overwhelming message was that if these offenders offend again, the law will come down on them like a ton of bricks.
The strategy worked. Youth homicides fell 63 percent, while the number of “shots fired” incidents fell 32 percent.
Punishing the guilty works. It’s true in schools, clubs, and broader society.
Something else has changed in Baltimore: its top prosecutor.
In 2015, Baltimore elected Marilyn Mosby as its state’s attorney. She was the nation’s youngest big-city prosecutor, part of the wave of “progressive prosecutors” that swept into office. Backed by left-leaning activists, these prosecutors sought to use their discretion to unilaterally decriminalize a host of petty offenses in the name of ending mass incarceration.
Mercy toward the guilty is punishment for the innocent. Progressive prosecutors have been disastrous for community well-being.
For decades, Baltimore allowed violence to flourish. People died, were injured, or were scared off from the city entirely. Over the past five years, the city’s government has come around to a simple conclusion: Stop tolerating violent people. When it did, the city got safer.
It really is that simple.