Baltimore Crime Rate 2025: 133 Homicides, 22.7 Per 100,000

133. That is how many people were murdered in Baltimore in 2025. It is the lowest homicide count the city has recorded since 1977 — nearly 50 years. The murder rate: 22.7 per 100,000, per Wikipedia citing Baltimore Police Department data.

133 homicides is the best Baltimore has posted in nearly 50 years. It is also 22.7 per 100,000. The national murder rate in 2025 is projected at approximately 4.0 per 100,000 by the Council on Criminal Justice — potentially the lowest ever recorded in law enforcement or public health data going back to 1900. Baltimore at 22.7 per 100,000 is 5.7 times that projected national baseline.

Full-year 2025 violent crime totals have not yet been released by the FBI. The FBI publishes national Crime Data Explorer Table 8 figures with a significant lag. The 2024 baseline — 9,101 violent crimes at 1,606.2 per 100,000 — is the most recent confirmed full-year FBI figure and serves as the prior year reference point throughout this analysis. For 2025, this piece uses BPD homicide data, Council on Criminal Justice mid-year and year-end reports, and WMAR News tracking data.

The Number in Context

Baltimore has roughly 566,632 residents, per U.S. Census Bureau estimates. The city has lost more than 100,000 people since its 1950 population peak of around 950,000. That population decline is load-bearing context for per-capita figures. As the city has shrunk, the concentrated poverty and disinvestment left behind in depopulated neighborhoods has not shrunk with it.

133 murders in a city of 566,632 produces a rate of 22.7 per 100,000. The Council on Criminal Justice projects the national murder rate in 2025 at approximately 4.0 per 100,000 — a figure that would mark the largest single-year percentage drop in the homicide rate on record, and the lowest level in over a century. Baltimore at 22.7 per 100,000 is 5.7 times that projected national baseline.

The 60% decline from Baltimore's 2021 peak of 334 homicides is the largest documented drop among any city in the CCJ study sample over the same period. That is not a rounding error or a measurement artifact. Something structural shifted — in enforcement strategy, in street-level violence intervention, in the concentrated group of active shooters responsible for the bulk of gun violence. What is also confirmed: 22.7 per 100,000 is still an extreme outlier in the American crime landscape, even in a year when the national trend moved strongly in the same direction.

The prior year baseline provides important context. In 2024, Baltimore recorded 201 homicides at 34.3 per 100,000 — itself the lowest count since 2011. The 2024 FBI Crime Data Explorer Table 8 figures show 9,101 total violent crimes at 1,606.2 per 100,000, 4.5 times the national average of 359 per 100,000. The 2025 homicide data is confirmed. The full 2025 violent crime totals — aggravated assault, robbery, rape, and total violent crime — will not be available from the FBI until later in 2026. Where 2025 data is available from BPD and CCJ reporting, this analysis uses it directly.

The Full Crime Picture

Murder is the headline. The rest of the data is where daily exposure lives. The Council on Criminal Justice Baltimore brief, covering H1 2025, shows improvement across every major violent crime category — and continued elevated rates that remain well above national norms.

2025 homicide data: Wikipedia/BPD via en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crime_in_Baltimore · H1 2025 offense rates: Council on Criminal Justice counciloncj.org/crime-in-baltimore-what-you-need-to-know/ · 2024 baseline: FBI Crime Data Explorer Table 8 cde.ucr.cjis.gov · Unreported/unsolved: BJS NCVS bjs.ojp.gov. Full 2025 FBI Table 8 data not yet released as of May 2026.

52% of violent crimes go unreported nationally, per BJS NCVS. The 133 homicides on record in 2025 are confirmed. The aggravated assault, robbery, and property crime figures from BPD and CCJ represent reported incidents only — the floor, not the ceiling. Every figure understates actual exposure.

56% of violent crimes go unsolved, per FBI clearance data. Six out of ten violent crime victims — including the families of six out of ten murder victims — never see a perpetrator held accountable. Unsolved crimes do not disappear from the risk calculation. Perpetrators who face no consequences remain active in the same areas.

Cumulative Exposure Across a Mortgage or Tenancy

Full-year 2025 violent crime totals are not yet available from the FBI. The 2024 baseline of 9,101 violent crimes — 1,606.2 per 100,000, 1-in-62 annual victimization odds — remains the most recent confirmed full-year figure for cumulative exposure modeling. The homicide data for 2025 is confirmed and shows a 34% reduction. Whether the broader violent crime rate for 2025 reflects a proportional decline will be documented when FBI Table 8 data is released.

Using the 2024 confirmed rate as a conservative baseline: a 1-in-62 annual violent crime victimization rate compounds over time. Over a standard 3-year tenancy, cumulative probability of violent victimization reaches approximately 4.7%. Over 5 years, roughly 7.7%. Over a 30-year mortgage, the compounding puts violent crime exposure as a near-certainty for most households. The national equivalents over those same windows are 1.1%, 1.8%, and approximately 10%. If the 2025 full-year violent crime rate comes in proportionally lower than 2024, these figures will be updated when FBI data is released. The directional risk calculus does not change.

The 60% drop in homicides from the 2021 peak, combined with a 51% drop in non-fatal shootings from 2024 to 2025, suggests the reduction extends beyond a single crime category. The CCJ H1 2025 data shows declines across aggravated assault, robbery, carjacking, and motor vehicle theft. That is a broad-based improvement. It is not a resolved risk profile.

How to Check Your Baltimore Address

Baltimore's citywide statistics are a starting point, not a verdict on any individual address. 22.7 per 100,000 is a weighted average of enormous extremes. Some blocks record zero violent crimes in a given year. Others record rates that far exceed the citywide average. The 22.7 per 100,000 murder rate is an average of a highly skewed distribution — and knowing where a specific address falls in that distribution is the only actionable information. A citywide average tells you almost nothing about the specific location you are evaluating.

Baltimore's geography of violence has been stable enough, over enough years, that address-level risk scoring is meaningfully more accurate than any neighborhood generalization. The historically high-violence corridors in West Baltimore — roughly the area bounded by North Avenue, Druid Hill, and the western rail lines — and the East Baltimore clusters around Monument Street and North Fulton have held their positions in the data across multiple mayoral administrations, multiple police strategies, and multiple waves of enforcement. The neighborhoods that are consistently safer have also been consistently safer. The map is not random.

That said, even within high-violence zip codes, specific blocks and address clusters perform differently based on proximity to active drug markets, transit nodes, and institutional anchors. SafeScore builds its address scores from granular incident data, not zip-code averages. Enter any Baltimore address at /score/ to see what the specific data shows for that location — not what the city average implies, and not what the neighborhood reputation suggests, but what the incident record at that address and its immediate surroundings actually reflects.

What Address-Level Data Shows That Citywide Stats Cannot

Citywide statistics answer one question: how does Baltimore compare to other cities? Address-level data answers the question that matters for an actual decision — how does this specific property compare to the blocks around it? Those are different questions with different answers. A 22.7 per 100,000 murder rate does not mean every block in Baltimore has a 22.7 per 100,000 murder rate. It means the city-level aggregate sits there. Some blocks are well above it. Many blocks are well below it. A skewed right tail of the most violent corridors pulls the average up. Knowing where a specific address falls in that distribution is what enables a real decision.

What 2026 Looks Like From Here

The downward trajectory from the 2022 peak is documented and sustained. 334 homicides in 2021. 333 in 2022. 261 in 2023. 201 in 2024. 133 in 2025. That is a consistent multi-year decline, not a single-year fluctuation. A 60% reduction from peak over four years in a city with Baltimore's entrenched violence profile is not statistical noise. The Council on Criminal Justice identifies Baltimore as the city with the largest homicide drop of any city in their study sample from 2019 to 2025.

The risk factors that have driven Baltimore's violence for decades have not been resolved. Concentrated poverty in West and East Baltimore neighborhoods. Vacancy rates that create unmonitored physical space. Labor market conditions that constrain legitimate economic pathways for young men in the highest-violence zip codes. None of those structural inputs have been transformed. 133 homicides in 2025 is the best Baltimore has posted in nearly 50 years. The city deserves to have that sentence written clearly. It is also 22.7 per 100,000. Both sentences belong in the same paragraph.

What 2026 looks like depends on whether the factors driving the 2022–2025 decline hold. BPD homicide data through early 2026 — tracked by WMAR News — will provide the first indication. Full-year 2025 FBI data, when released later in 2026, will show whether the homicide decline was accompanied by a proportional drop in non-fatal violent crime. If the full violent crime rate in 2025 fell in line with the 34% homicide reduction, the odds calculation for Baltimore residents will have improved materially. If the homicide decline reflects improved emergency medical response more than reduced total violence, the street-level risk picture will look different. The data will say so when it arrives.