It's the Brian Larry Show on WNYC.

Good morning again, everyone.

Now we continue our WNYC Centennial series,

A Hundred Years of a Hundred Things,

with Thing Number 24, very relevant to the

election year and to life in New York, 100 years of crime and punishment.

Crime rates and incarceration rates are obviously big contentious issues in our area in this country

overall. So maybe seeing where we've been will help give us perspective on where we are

and maybe even where we should go. So, for example, the number of murders in New York City in the

year 2000, according to the city's official stats, was 673. Last year, it was 391. It hit its low

during the de Blasio years of 2017 and 2018 when there were fewer than 300.

Similar with robberies, that includes what we often call muggings and other instances of stealing stuff directly from your person,

32,000 in the year 2000, only half that last year at around 16,000.

But if you lived here all that time, when did you feel safer in 2000 or in 2023?

So we could frame this as 100 years of crime, punishment, and perception as well.

And stepping back from that 25-year view to a hundred-year

view, prisons, professional police forces, plea bargaining, drug laws, gun crimes, white-collar

crimes, incarceration rates compared to other countries, the rates of incarceration by race,

the death penalty, all of these gradually became features

of modern American life in their modern ways over the last hundred-plus years. And of course,

they are contentious political issues. So let's talk about 100 years of crime and punishment

in America. My guest is Khalil Gibran Muhammad, author of, among other things,

...