Theoretical fundamentals of prevention policy remain poorly understood and require the study of law and society and the development of individual respect or awareness of the law; i.e., the internalization of moral values. In particular, the widely-held belief in deterrence through harsh and prompt sentencing defies empirical proof. Law enforcement planning and action, however, takes place despite the fact that the causes of criminality have not been satisfactorily elucidated. Police crime data are the principal source of information for prevention planning, although these become available with a significant time lag, are imprecisely categorized, and are fraught with potential errors of interpretation. Police data do not reflect the effects of prevention measures nor the true crime rate, since there are a large number of unreported crimes. Indeed, they may give rise to distortions such as viewing the results of stepped-up enforcement as increased incidence or assuming illicit drug trafficking to be curbed by arrests of street peddlers. Geographic crime analyses, broad-based victimization surveys, and breakdowns of absolute statistical counts into relational subcategories are approaches that may improve insights into the general crime picture. Nevertheless, statistics alone cannot provide a true grasp of the complexity of social interactions. Footnotes are supplied.