Yet there are people who still maintain that the crime wave is on the wane.
Their priority was not to protect local communities from either the occupying forces or the post-war crime wave fed by hyperinflation and generalised penury.
Perhaps reflecting the deleterious effects of the crime wave, the image of the judiciary did not improve in the years immediately following the war.
Indeed, the transaction costs of demilitarisation heightened the post-war crime wave.
Viewed in this way, the truism that a crime wave was the cause of legislative activism on penal reform becomes problematic.
Critics used the new laws as a convenient scapegoat and a distraction from the inadequacies of the criminal justice system and other factors in the crime wave.
Throughout the 1870s, the condition of the kingdom deteriorated, as food shortages and inflation incited popular revolts and a crime wave of dacoity which the authorities proved powerless to quell.
While they take such perceptions seriously, their prime concern is not with the much-touted crime wave, but rather with strengthening the rule of law (p. 3).
