ABSTRACT
Two important social facts about the post-war period, and certainly its latter part, remained unperceived by many of the protagonists in the debate about the relationship between crime and welfare. There can be hardly anyone whose political consciousness goes back as far as 1945 who can have forgotten what the very mention of the words 'Welfare State' could do in the most civilised of social gatherings. The problem of increased crime between the wars has to be viewed with caution. Many of the increased number of offenders before the courts were in fact a new class of criminals, the traffic offender, a species that multiplied at a great rate. Positivism, at least in the criminological field, has had distinctly feline qualities. But politicians, and the policy makers who stand back in the shadows behind them, are, for the most part, more frequently motivated and activated by instrumental concerns rather than high moral purposes.
