The first section describes major changes in Dutch crime policy and criminality over the last 20 years. The second part of the study speculates about the interplay between, respectively, certainty and severity of punishment and crime rates in the Netherlands. The major source for the analysis of developments in Dutch crime and crime policy is the recently published government policy document 'Sameleving en Criminaliteit: Een Beleidsplan voor de Komende Jaren' (1985), supplemented by other government reports, criminal justice statistics, and scholarly publications. The study does not attempt to address the problems and criticism arising from the use of aggregated data to study general deterrence, due to the absence of data necessary for appropriate sophisticated time-series analyses. Rather, the study provides a general description of some of the important changes in Dutch criminal justice policy and crime, with comments on the implications for deterrence theory. The predicted negative relationship between crime rates and punishment certainty was supported, as was the expected negative relationship between crime rates and punishment severity. The prediction that a decline in punishment certainty would be associated with a sanction severity increase was not supported. 13 tables, 46-item bibliography.