Crime is down. Why don't people feel safe?

It's Been a Minute

NPR

News Commentary, Society & Culture, News, Spirituality, Religion & Spirituality

4.6 • 8.8K Ratings

🗓️ 19 November 2025

⏱️ 26 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

What’s the difference between feeling unsafe and being unsafe?

According to Gallup, about half of Americans see crime as being extremely or very serious. And there are a lot of very real threats out there to people’s safety, but there’s also a lot of fearful rhetoric that’s more unfounded. While immigrants are less likely to commit crimes than U.S.-born citizens, and trans people are unlikely to commit mass shootings, fear of these groups is being weaponized against them. So how can we disentangle being unsafe and feeling unsafe – and better protect ourselves and each other?

Brittany gets into it with Nicole Lewis, engagement editor at The Marshall Project, and Lex McMenamin, writer and editor.

Follow Brittany Luse on Instagram: @bmluse

For handpicked podcast recommendations every week, subscribe to NPR’s Pod Club newsletter at npr.org/podclub.

Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoices

NPR Privacy Policy

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	This week on Ye Gods with Scott Carter.
0:02.4	We've been living in an age of cruelty for a while.
0:05.0	We are now in an age of corruption.
0:07.0	New York Times columnist David French urges us to create unity through resistance.
0:12.7	In an age of cruelty, kindness is rebellious.
0:15.5	In an age of corruption, virtue is rebellious.
0:19.0	I'm Scott Carter.
0:19.8	Listen to David French on Yeeods, wherever you get your podcasts.
0:24.9	We're never going to be able to eliminate all threats. That's just not a world.
0:29.8	Unfortunately, I think we can live in. But we have to build a practice that, like, baseline
0:34.2	helps us feel not like cuckoo banana pants every day.
0:42.9	Because you cannot function from a place of completely overwhelmed and freaked out.
0:47.0	Hello, hello.
0:51.0	I'm Brittany Luce and you're listening to It's Been a Minute from NPR.
0:55.9	A show about what's going on in culture and why it doesn't happen by accident.
1:09.5	Do you feel safe? Like, in your relationships, in our country? According to Gallup,
1:12.8	our national fears around crime have actually dropped a lot in the past couple of years from big spikes, but still 49 percent, about half of Americans, see
1:18.7	crime in the U.S. as extremely or very serious. And the same numbers say that they think
1:24.7	there's more crime now than there was a year ago.
1:32.9	I've been thinking about this because I've also seen a lot of fear, or at least the rhetoric of fear, around being victimized by specific groups, like immigrants.
1:38.1	Crime in this country is through the roof, and we have a new form of crime.
1:42.0	It's called migrant crime.
	...

Transcript will be available on the free plan in 12 days. Upgrade to see the full transcript now.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from NPR, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of NPR and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.