As a high school student in Baltimore, Sean made a mistake that changed the course of his life. A smart kid with good grades, Sean got into a fight that put another student in the hospital with life-threatening injuries.
Sean, who was 18 when he went on trial, spent the next four years in prison for attempted murder.
He describes his first days behind bars as an “aha!” moment. He knew he was better than the young man who got into that fight. He stopped other prisoners from calling him by his street name. He secured his General Educational Development diploma. And on release from prison, he enrolled in a counseling program that helped him navigate back into civic society and get a job.
Why We Wrote This
As some U.S. cities try to lower crime rates, they find old approaches lacking and turn to new ideas. In Baltimore, targeted policing and vigorous intervention combine to offer alternative paths for potential offenders. So far, results show that a belief in the possibility of change, and commitment to a new strategy, can pay off.
“I had to really show people, you’re just not gonna get me messed up,” Sean says. (To protect his identity, the Monitor is not publishing his street name or his surname.)
As Sean was serving his prison term, the city of Baltimore was having its own epiphany. After a long stretch of rampant crime, including 300-plus murders per year, Baltimore elected a new mayor in 2020, who realized that traditional policing methods alone would never bring down the city’s horrific crime rate. So, by the time Sean emerged from prison, Charm City and its new mayor, Brandon Scott, were launching new policing methods that had already brought down crime rates in Philadelphia; Detroit; Oakland, California; Chicago; and St. Louis, among other cities.
Melanie Stetson Freeman/Staff
The Group Violence Reduction Strategy (GVRS) – born from Boston’s Operation Ceasefire of the 1990s – combines real-time intelligence among city, state, and federal law enforcement agencies, as well as with hospitals and social service groups, to identify that small number of young people who commit the most violent crimes and who have the longest rap sheets. It includes targeted policing strategies to monitor and arrest those offenders, and it brings police, pastors, and social service groups together in coordinated interventions that offer those at the highest risk of criminal activity, like Sean, a pathway to a crime-free life.
It’s a hard pivot from the stop-and-frisk days made famous in New York City in the 1990s, when Black and Latino residents, often innocent, were disproportionately targeted. And it appears to be working in Baltimore, where GVRS is credited with halving the city’s murder rate in its first 18 months. In Stockton, California, another example, GVRS reduced murders by 30%, cut the number of shooting incidents by 40%, and slowed recidivism of violent offenders by 37% between 2019 and 2022.
These positive results come at a time of debate over crime, as President Donald Trump deploys federal law enforcement agencies and National Guard troops into major cities he believes are overrun with criminals. Last September, after having sent troops to Los Angeles, Mr. Trump said he had “an obligation to protect this country, and that includes Baltimore,” even though Baltimore has been making steady progress in reducing violent crime since the GVRS program was implemented in 2022.
While GVRS proponents admit there are no easy fixes for urban crime, Sean’s story of redemption and Baltimore’s turnaround are evidence that redemption for a man and a city can happen through a mix of stubborn commitment and a belief that change is possible. Tough-on-crime policies are popular with voters, though these attitudes can shift dramatically. A 2023 Gallup poll found 58% of Americans felt that the U.S. criminal justice system is not tough enough in handling crime, though a 2025 Gallup survey found that 67% of Americans preferred spending money on addressing social and economic problems that lead to crime rather than deterring crime through more prisons, police, and judges.
As a result, instead of winning votes by promising “zero-tolerance” law enforcement – as former city officials such as New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani and Baltimore Mayor Martin O’Malley had done in the 1990s – Mr. Scott came to office in 2020 in this historic port city promising social investment. City officials and police department leaders knew they needed to prove their GVRS strategy worked. With seven straight years of high murder rates, assaults, rapes, and carjackings, many Baltimoreans seemed to have forgotten what it felt like to feel safe.
Melanie Stetson Freeman/Staff
“We had gotten to such a place as a city where it felt like, this 300-plus murder benchmark we have been at, just felt like it was our new normal, and that it was difficult to attack,” says Stefanie Mavronis, director of the Baltimore Mayor’s Office of Neighborhood Safety and Engagement (MONSE).
“But you can’t police your way out of that,” Ms. Mavronis says. “We were trying all the tough-on-crime things that cities try, and when you look at where we did have declines in homicides and shootings, they typically did not last for more than a year or two.” Relying just on arrests and incarceration doesn’t work, she says. “It’s not how you sustainably address public safety.”
Rebuilding trust
For the police department, a major challenge was rebuilding trust after the death of Baltimore resident Freddie Gray in police custody. Mr. Gray, a 25-year-old African American, was arrested April 12, 2015, after making eye contact with police and fleeing. Police caught him and found that he was carrying a knife. While being transported, Mr. Gray was not seat-belted and somehow sustained injuries to his neck and spinal cord. Gray slipped into a coma and died. Community members accused the police of extreme use of force. Three officers were arrested but acquitted of charges including involuntary manslaughter. Charges against three other officers were ultimately dropped.
For a time, Baltimore’s streets were riven by protests by residents demanding more police accountability. When Mr. Scott was elected in 2020, one of his first steps was to establish MONSE to develop a more holistic strategy to restore public safety while repairing the community’s relations with law enforcement. They chose a robust carrot-and-stick approach, giving at-risk people stipends to engage in positive activities, such as completing job applications and getting driver’s licenses. But they balanced those incentives with more punitive measures, such as swift arrest and prosecution for those who persisted in criminal activity.
The key to this strategy is to weaken violent criminal groups from within: Target the most violent offenders for prosecution, and then offer a way out for those on the periphery.
In the wake of the Freddie Gray protests, Mayor Scott’s term began “with very low levels of trust and confidence in both city government and our police department,” says Ms. Mavronis. “And so we’re working every day to do things that help restore that trust. Rebuild it, and in some cases, build it for the first time.”
Melanie Stetson Freeman/Staff
Terence Nash, chief of GVRS in the Baltimore crime reduction effort, says that what unites service providers, community moral voices, the police department, and others is GVRS’ central tenet: to keep people “safe, alive, and free.” Those who agree to clean up their lives get help to do so, such as counseling and job training. Those who return to crime are held responsible.
“When we say we’re going to hold you accountable, and we’re going to protect the community, we mean it,” Mr. Nash says. “If you put other people’s lives in danger by your actions, and if you violate the mandate, you are going to be taken out of the community.”
Since the GVRS was implemented in 2022, law enforcement has delivered 817 direct communications to young people at the highest risk of involvement in group-related violence. In a direct communication, police officers tell people they are being watched. The youth can either enter social service programs to seek a job or face stiff prosecution if arrested for future crimes. Many of those the police talk with are members of organized groups. Of the 817 contacted, 360 of them now receive job training and other services from MONSE’s designated social service providers, the Youth Advocate Programs (YAP) and Roca. Of those young participants, more than 90% have not been charged with another crime.
How it works
In Baltimore’s downtown YAP office, a sign reads, “You can not go back and change the beginning, but you can start where you are and change the ending.”
On a recent Tuesday afternoon, Eshyna Young, a YAP employment skills coordinator, is helping a pair of participants to be clear and confident in mock job interviews.
Melanie Stetson Freeman/Staff
One, a middle-aged man named Norman, was shot by armed men outside his apartment building last August. The shooter’s motives are unclear – robbery or retribution – but Norman acknowledges he had a criminal record for selling drugs. A YAP outreach worker contacted Norman about how to step away from criminal activity.
Norman says he has never held a job other than selling drugs, but that he was ready to try legitimate employment. At the time of his shooting, he had learned his girlfriend was pregnant and that he would soon need to start earning an income for his growing family. In addition, Norman had received a “direct communication” from police that he was on their radar screen and would be prosecuted if he continued to sell drugs.
“I didn’t want to be dead,” he says. “I didn’t want to be in prison. I was willing and receptive to the change.”
The nerve center for GVRS is in the MONSE headquarters in West Baltimore. Here, city officials, prosecutors, and law enforcement track crime data in real time and hold weekly and daily meetings with other stakeholders to identify the city’s most violent offenders and the networks they operate in.
Baltimore police have long known that a relatively small number of people account for most violent crimes in the city, and the most effective way to reduce their power is to separate them from their associates. GVRS reaches out to these hangers-on through respected moral leaders – pastors, teachers, counselors – to offer them another way.
In 2020, the police department tested its new strategy in the Western District, the area with the city’s highest violent crime rate. If GVRS was going to succeed, Baltimore Police Col. Robert Velte and his team say, it had to succeed here.
Melanie Stetson Freeman/Staff
The department introduced Neighborhood Policing Plans, mandating that police work together with community partners to identify underlying causes of crime, such as abandoned cars, blight, and drug activity, and to come up with solutions, including improved street lighting and other environmental factors that meet the community’s need to feel safe.
In January 2022, MONSE signed contracts with social service providers to provide young offenders alternatives to the justice system. Those who committed crimes were arrested and prosecuted. Those who entered counseling programs were given the chance to find employment in jobs that often paid more than what they could earn through theft or drugs. (A 2000 study by economists Steven D. Levitt and Sudhir Alladi Venkatesh found that while drug gang leaders earned between $50,000 and $130,000 per year, their lieutenants and street sellers earned well below minimum wage.)
A 31-year police veteran, Colonel Velte has seen crime strategies come and go, and he knew his fellow officers would be skeptical about GVRS. But the notable drop in crime in Baltimore has turned many skeptics into believers, he says.
His greatest hope for solutions is with the people of Baltimore. “You know, I don’t want to view Baltimore through a violent lens. The vast majority of people in Baltimore are not those folks, which is why the strategy works. Look at your top 5% of people driving violence. Once you subtract them, the violence goes away.”
Measuring success
In its first 18 months, Baltimore’s GVRS reduced gun violence by 33%, with 60 fewer victims, and cut carjackings by 33%, according to research by the University of Pennsylvania’s Crime and Justice Policy Lab.
At first, Baltimore officials were in “disbelief,” says Jeremy Biddle, director of Violence Reduction Policy and Programs at the University of Pennsylvania. “They didn’t think that they could do this, and like lots of city leaders, they were a little incredulous that they can actually affect changes in community violence, as opposed to just having to endure it. I think that was an epiphany like, ‘Wow, we’re onto something.’”
The first step was to overcome this disbelief that change was possible.
Melanie Stetson Freeman/Staff
“Cynicism is a big factor, right?” Mr. Biddle says. In initial meetings, city and police leaders told Biddle that he was naive to believe GVRS would work. “They might say to me, ‘I’ve lived here my whole life. You haven’t. What do you mean you’re gonna do something that’s gonna bring violence down?’”
Citizens needed convincing as well. In meetings, Mr. Biddle recalls citizen leaders telling him that the police aren’t here to help the community. “And then they’re not going to cooperate with the police, and the police won’t be effective, and then they’ll see the police not being effective,” he says. ”It creates, you know, an unvirtuous cycle.”
Ben Struhl, executive director of the Crime and Justice Policy Lab, said that the key to overcoming that cynicism is strong leadership.
“As a city, you can make choices and do things without having tons of extra resources,” says Professor Struhl, who got his start in crime reduction strategies at Northeastern University, where he launched the Center on Crime and Community Resilience. “You can make choices to seriously impact things that even seem intractable, and see results in the near term. But there is a criticism there which is correct, which is that a lot of these cities have allowed serious violence to continue due to not having clarity on what they could do.”
While crime rates are dropping in Baltimore, many people who live there say the city is still not safe. In 1996, the Boston Police Department responded to similar public pressure – much of it driven by local pastors from the TenPoint Coalition – to address a 230% increase in murders during the crack cocaine boom of the early 1990s. Their solution, Operation Ceasefire, introduced a new method of targeted policing called Group Violence Intervention, which has since become a central pillar of crime reduction strategies, including the GVRS in Baltimore.
Melanie Stetson Freeman/Staff
“Last year, we saw a historic reduction,” Colonel Velte said. “But as anybody in the department would tell you, 133 [homicides] is still far too high, and unacceptable, especially for a city our size.”
Path to redemption
Just as the city of Baltimore has started its own journey of redemption, so, too, has Sean.
His first crucial step was taking control of his life. High school and neighborhood friends had assigned him a nickname that seemed to define him as violent, angry, ungovernable. It was a name that followed him to prison and persisted even after he finished his sentence.
“See, the easiest part about that was I never really accepted it,” Sean says. “I was getting away from the assigned feeling of, ‘If it’s gonna be bad, we gotta have the bad person on our side.’”
Resetting the world’s impression of him was one thing, Sean says. Changing his own expectations for himself was another.
That’s when he received an invitation from a local pastor who was supporting the GVRS effort. Sean says he heard the pastor would talk about a new program aimed at helping at-risk youths find jobs.
On arrival at the pastor’s church, Sean and a friend saw police officers armed with AR-type rifles. The police were there to prevent violence from breaking out among the attendees. Sean was unnerved.
Even so, he went inside.
Soon afterward, Sean started going to the local YAP office for individual counseling and soft-skills training.
Melanie Stetson Freeman/Staff
His counselor, Sterling Herring, says young men of Sean’s age often struggle with the early steps of getting a job. He attributes this to a lack of maturity and, in many cases, to a dearth of older male family members who can model good work habits. But he says that Sean’s determination gives him reason for hope.
So, even while Sean started and lost a succession of jobs, Mr. Sterling says he could tell that Sean was staying clean, avoiding trouble, and trying to stay away from old friends.
Sean’s persistence has paid off. With YAP’s help, he now has a union job at the Port of Baltimore, shuttling cars from the ship pier to an area where they will be loaded onto trucks for delivery to car dealerships.
Sean’s experience shows that Baltimore’s approach is working, says Ms. Mavronis, the MONSE director.
“GVRS is about balancing opportunity and accountability,” she says. “Each successful intervention allows us to focus enforcement on that small number of people who refuse to put down the guns and continue to inflict harm on our communities in ways that don’t over-police communities or over-incarcerate people.”
After one week on the new job, Sean says he feels relieved that his life is finally starting to work out. He gets to bed early, so he doesn’t sleep through his alarm. He attends a local mosque, where he has found positive role models.
And he has the support of Mr. Sterling, his life coach. Even after YAP participants complete their programs and land jobs, YAP coaches stay in touch.
“You need a ride home?” Mr. Sterling asks Sean at the end of a counseling session.
Sean smiles. “Yeah.”
