Baltimore has a poverty rate of 21.2%, comparable to Columbus (19.5%), Houston (20.5%), Pittsburgh (20.5%) and Atlanta (20.8%), and less than Philadelphia (24.3%) and Cleveland (32.7%), to name but a few. All of those other cities have significantly lower violent crime rates than Baltimore.

Even “safe” East Coast cities have a lot of poverty- see Boston (18.9%) and NYC (17.9%). source: US Census Bureau 2021 and FBI Crime Data 2019).

There aren’t consistent or serious penalties for criminal behavior in Baltimore, which means the culture bred by poverty has an outsized influence on the lived experience here. We just let our problems fester more than other places with a similar proportion of miserable assholes.

It's not just poverty, but wealth inequality that creates desperation and breeds violent responses. When it seems (or is) unjust that others have what you know you never will, it's easier to justify antisocial behavior to survive. If, instead, we developed and invested not just money but our own time and humanity in collaborative, humanizing, prosocial solutions, the justification for antisocial behavior would begin to evaporate. Instead, we treat antisocial behavior with antisocial punishment, increasing antisocial behavior.