Crime Policy in Denmark How We Managed to Reduce the Prison Population

Fluctuations in Denmark's crime rates over the past two decades cor respond with major social changes—the rapid spread of industrialization in the late 1950s, the rise in drug use among youths in the 1960s, the increased unemployment in the 1970s. Despite the rapid increase in crimi nal activity in the 1960s, the prison population remained stable until early in the present decade. Since 1973, changes in Danish penal laws—the adoption of fixed sentences, the "depenalization" of minor property crimes, the merging of probation and prison administration under a single system—have successfully stemmed the increasing flow of offenders into the prisons. Further efforts at decreasing the number of prison inmates through criminal justice policy change are being considered. However, it is clear that reducing crime itself is an objective that is contingent on more far-reaching social reform.