ABSTRACT
This chapter describes that penal policy is a sort of sluice gate which can be used to regulate the flow of crime. It does not seem superfluous, therefore, to examine the statistical material in order to study the extent, if any, to which penal policy affects the crime rate. The chapter discusses English, French, German, and Italian figures. It provides comparative figures for criminality and methods of punishment in England for the years 1911 and 1928. The official English statistics for 1928 take as their point of departure for this problem the number, of crimes known to the police, not the number of prosecutions. The chapter shows that the rate of crime is unaffected by the penal policy but is closely dependent upon economic developments. In sum, a relatively more severe penal policy has had no more effect on crime than a relatively lenient policy.
