structural:scholar_edition, quality:corruption
Crime

Baltimore is considered one of the most dangerous cities in the U.S. Experts say an emerging gang presence and heavy recruitment of adolescent boys into these gangs, who are statistically more likely to get serious charges reduced or dropped, are major reasons for the sustained crime crises in the city. Overall reported crime dropped by 60% from the mid-1990s to the mid-2010s, but homicides and gun violence remain high and far exceed the national average.

The worst years for crime in Baltimore overall were from 1993 to 1996, with 96,243 crimes reported in 1995. Baltimore's 344 homicides in 2015 represented the highest homicide rate in the city's recorded history—52.5 per 100,000 people, surpassing the record ratio set in 1993—and the second-highest for U.S. cities behind St. Louis and ahead of Detroit. Of Baltimore's 344 homicides in 2015, 321 (93.3%) of the victims were African-American.

Drug use and deaths by drug use, particularly drugs used intravenously, such as heroin, are a related problem which has impaired Baltimore for decades. Among cities greater than 400,000, Baltimore ranked 2nd in its opiate drug death rate in the United States. The DEA reported that 10% of Baltimore's population – about 64,000 people – are addicted to heroin, most of which is trafficked into the city from New York.

In 2011, Baltimore police reported 196 homicides, the lowest number in the city since 197 homicides in 1978, and far lower than the peak homicide count of 353 slayings in 1993. City leaders at the time credited a sustained focus on repeat violent offenders and increased community engagement for the continued drop, reflecting a nationwide decline in crime.

In August 2014, Baltimore's new youth curfew law went into effect. It prohibits unaccompanied children under age 14 from being on the streets after 9 p.m. and those aged 14–16 from being out after 10 p.m. during the week and 11 p.m. on weekends and during the summer. The goal is to keep children out of dangerous places and reduce crime.

Crime in Baltimore reached another peak in 2015 when the year's tally of 344 homicides was second only to the record 353 in 1993, when Baltimore had about 100,000 more residents. The killings in 2015 were on pace with recent years in the early months of 2015, but skyrocketed after the unrest and rioting of late April following the killing of Freddie Gray by police. In five of the next eight months, killings topped 30–40 per month. Nearly 90 percent of 2015's homicides resulted from shootings, renewing calls for new gun laws. In 2016, there were 318 murders in the city. This total marked a 7.56 percent decline in homicides from 2015.

In an interview with The Guardian on November 2, 2017, David Simon, himself a former police reporter for The Baltimore Sun, ascribed the most recent surge in murders to the high-profile decision by Baltimore state's attorney, Marilyn Mosby, to charge six city police officers following the death of Freddie Gray after he was paralyzed during a "rough-ride" in a police van while in police custody in April 2015, dying from the injury a week later. "What Mosby basically did was send a message to the Baltimore police department: 'I'm going to put you in jail for making a bad arrest.' So officers figured it out: 'I can go to jail for making the wrong arrest, so I'm not getting out of my car to clear a corner,' and that's exactly what happened post-Freddie Gray."

In Baltimore, "arrest numbers have plummeted from more than 40,000 in 2014, the year before Gray's death and the charges against the officers, to about 18,000. This happened as homicides soared from 211 in 2014 to 344 in 2015 – an increase of 63%." Simon's HBO miniseries We Own This City aired in April 2022 and covered many of the events surrounding the death of Freddie Gray and the work slowdown by the Baltimore Police Department during that time period.

In the six years between 2016 and 2022, Baltimore tallied 318, 342, 309, 348, 335, 338, and 335 homicides, respectively. In 2023, Baltimore saw a 20% drop in homicides to 263.