The city of Camden, New Jersey, just reported that they experienced their first summer free of homicides in fifty years, and overall crime is at a 55-year low. That is something to be proud of.
My parents lived in Camden for a short time during their early married years, and my mother grew up there in a time when everybody knew everybody else, and you would just as soon see a child bringing home a pack of cigarettes (and exact change) from the corner store as a grownup bringing an open pitcher of beer home to have with dinner.
Camden is recognized nationwide for its reputation as a center of blight, poverty and crime. The city is situated across the Delaware River from Philadelphia, PA. Residents of New Jersey in other parts of the county can easily distinguish the difference in location by the major highway running between Camden and the rest of the suburbs; on one side are quaint homes, and on the other are abandoned or security gated businesses. The main street running through the heart of Camden becomes more depressing the further West one travels its length. The cemetery where poet Walt Whitman is buried is next to a hospital and abandoned convent, then the journey’s scenery morphs into row homes of varying degrees of repair and rubbish, where the neighborhood has become home to a mixture of the low-to-moderate income and the malcontent attempting to survive.
Originally Camden was similar to neighborhoods in New York, serving as a melting pot of immigrants and thriving middle-class candidates starting to take root in the opportunities offered by shipbuilding, RCA Victor, and Campbell Soup, which built its headquarters there. Originally a Quaker community, residents in the early 20th century traveled between other parts of New Jersey and Philadelphia with thriving job markets. The decline of industrialization caused people to move away, and new populations moved in with no means of livelihood, leading to an increase in urban decay and crime.
The state university, Rutgers, grew its Camden campus into a huge compound much different from when I spent a few years attending evening classes. They now have dorms and athletic fields. The Benjamin Franklin Bridge’s lights illuminate a thriving college community, and some of the torn shells of abandoned homes were razed. A high security prison nearby which operated from 1985 until 2009, was also closed down, flattened and given over to open space and a small children’s playground.
The county formed a police force, and some new businesses (particularly a massive expanded hospital complex near the waterfront) have brought renewal to the area, and crime has gone down by seventy percent or more in some instances. Only seven homicides have been reported in Camden in 2025, and with three months of the year to go, the figures appear to be promising.
The poverty rate of over 28% still makes Camden a poor city compared to the 12.4% national poverty average. However, loft apartment living, an aquarium, and new business ventures are appearing regularly, bringing a promising future to the city.
Just a piece of good news when there has been so much of the other type lately. It’s always comforting to see life come back when it lacks for too long. Here’s to completing 2025 on a positive note.
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