In 2015 I wrote Baltimore Arrests are Down and Crime is Way Up and, as I predicted, Baltimore tipped into an high crime equilibrium. After the Freddie Gray riots, arrests declined and crime shot up but crime stayed high even after arrests rebounded. In my view, the surge fed on itself: higher crime strained police resources, and that strain—in and of itself—reduced the probability of punishment, sustaining the high-crime equilibrium, as in my crime wave paper . Yet, beginning around 2022 crime in Baltimore—most especially murders—began to fall. In April, Baltimore had four homicides, the lowest total for any single month since at least 1970 . So far this year, there were 38 , compared with 51 in the same period last year. At the current rate, Baltimore would end 2026 with fewer than 100 homicides. There were 323 just four years ago. How did we get from a city in which the question was how high can crime rise, to one where the question is how low can it go?…