ABSTRACT
The effects of the increase in crime on penal policy should be most noticeable in Germany, the country in which the crisis was most severe, and in which wage cuts and unemployment created the sharpest decline in the living standard of broad sections of the population. Procedure and substantive law that are too precisely fixed would impede the development of the new power relationships. The deterioration of both substantive and adjective criminal law has been accompanied by a change in penal policy. Protection of the property of the individual capitalist must yield before the task of protecting the monopolist groups which control the state, both against outsiders and against any possible outbreak from within the monopoly group itself. Italy also compares unfavorably with France when this chapter examines the capacity of the prisons as compared with the size of the prison population. Overpopulation is accompanied by an inability to find enough productive labor for the prisoners.
