In this study, a comparison was conducted of state variation in crime control using 2 measures: the custody rate or the number of people incarcerated per 100,000 population and the police employee rate or the number of sworn and non-sworn police per 100,000 population. The custody rate in this study combined both prison and jail rates. The analyses crossed four decades: 1970, 1980, 1990, and 2000. The study indicates that analyzing both custody and police rates shows distinctly different crime control patterns over time in the United States, Australia, and Europe that provide a more accurate and complex picture than that available from custody rates alone. Findings also show that punitiveness, as measured by increasing custody rates, does not adequately account for crime control variations across States over the last few decades. Empirical analyses of police rates in the United States, Europe, and Australia show more stability and greater homogeneity compared with custody use, suggesting tentative support for differentiating two approaches to policing at the front end of criminal justice systems: (1) policing for public order and (2) policing for crime control. Tables and references