According to the editor of the current B&N edition of Moll Flanders, Defoe personally holds that Newgate Prison and English law enforcement of the time actually caused more crime than they deterred.
If that is so, simply refusing to do anything at all to enforce the law, utter anarchy, would have resulted in less crime than actually beset the English society of the time.
Could he have really believed so foolish a thing?
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