Baltimore City rolls out summer youth plan, keeps curfew in place

Several Baltimore recreation centers will stay open until 11 p.m. on Friday and Saturday nights from June 26 through Aug. 16 as the city rolls out “In the Mix in ’26,” its fourth straight summer youth engagement strategy.

Deputy Mayor of Health and Human Services Letitia Dzirasa previewed the plan on May 13 after Mayor Brandon Scott could not attend in person. She said the city was offering “fun, proactive, safe activities,” including teen pool parties, midnight basketball, Bmore Hoops, more mobile recreation center stops, additional summer camp slots, YouthWorks jobs and Safe Passage coverage for summer school.

The city is also keeping its juvenile curfew in place through Labor Day weekend. Under Baltimore City Code, children under 14 must be home by 9 p.m., while young people who are at least 14 but under 17 face an 11 p.m. cutoff. Weekend enforcement is heightened, and the code also includes daytime curfew, parental responsibility, establishment responsibility and enforcement provisions.

Baltimore is pairing that restriction with a safety record officials say is moving in the right direction. City officials said the 2024 summer youth engagement effort was correlated with a 66% drop in youth shooting victimizations and a 31% drop in youth aggravated assault victimizations. Later city reporting said that since 2023, youth victims of non-fatal shootings are down 57%, while youth aggravated assault victims are down more than 30%.

The effort runs through the Mayor’s Office of Neighborhood Safety and Engagement, which Scott created in December 2020, and Baltimore City Recreation and Parks, which operates more than 50 recreation centers across the city. Officials have also said a central information hub is available for families and young people to find programming and register for events, while MONSE has announced outreach by community violence intervention partners through Labor Day weekend.

YouthWorks remains one of the clearest signs that Baltimore is treating summer as both a jobs problem and a safety problem. In his March 31 State of the City address, Scott said the FY2027 budget would fund 6,600 YouthWorks positions for young people ages 14 to 21, giving the city another tool to fill the hours when conflict, idle time and neighborhood tension can rise.