The overwhelming majority of the city's victims and suspects in 2008 were black, 91 percent and 94 percent, respectively, and nearly half were younger than 25. About 64 percent of the city's population is black.
Northeastern University criminologist James Alan Fox co-authored a recent study showing that gun violence among black youths, while still lower than a decade ago, is rising nationwide. From 2002 to 2007, the number of young black victims rose 54 percent, while such perpetrators rose 47 percent.
"It's not an aberration or a single-year blip," said Fox. "Especially in terms of juvenile justice, we're less equipped to deal with it now than we were a decade ago. There are initiatives and programs that work, but we've let them slide."
In Baltimore, which Fox's research shows had the second-highest number of young black perpetrators behind Detroit, the increase has been less pronounced. But Fox says change will also be harder to achieve here, grouping the city with six others whose problems are so deeply entrenched that programs working in other cities might have little effect.
"You can make improvements, absolutely, but you're not going to have a homicide rate that looks like Boston or Seattle. It's not going to happen," Fox said.
Standing near William C. March Middle School near Lake Clifton last week as police investigated an afternoon killing of a mother of three, James Johnson, 51, agreed that true progress seems far off.
"With the killings down, it does make things look better. But when you look at the whole picture, is it really better?" asked Johnson, a state employee. "With this drug thing we got going on, until they get that controlled, it's never going to be good."
Mayor Sheila Dixon, who often speaks of the city's crime problem in broader socioeconomic terms, said lasting change comes from "breaking cycles - of addiction, of accepting violence in homes and communities."
"People who don't care about life, who don't care about another person, speaks of some basic fundamental values that we could do everything in our power [to fix], but it has to start from home," she said. "There's many areas that we have to focus in on beyond just policing."
Officials throughout the year pointed to efforts that were fueling the decline. But the September killing of former City Councilman Kenneth N. Harris Sr. during a robbery at a Northeast Baltimore jazz club shocked the city, and a bloody November - in which 30 people were killed in 30 days - brought cautions from police and city officials that even their best efforts are often not enough.
