Severity of Punishment and the Times

Something that was discussed in Chapter 7, was that the severity of a punishment should be tailored to the nature of the crime and the individual, and all punishments should be individualized to this system. How then should crimes be punished in a pre-war and post-war society. During the Depression a large increase of crime in the form of organized crime came into fruitation, and with WWII laws were more severely enforced than they were before such troubles happened. The simple fact that problems such as a social recession can cause people to become desperate enough to make people feel like they need to resort to crime to feed themselves and provide for their families, leading to a cracking down in the nature of law enforcement. Thinking just in the past few years with the rise in terrorism, such measures as checking bags more carefully, stronger punishments for threatening behavior, and so on.  Humans as a species are capable of great and terrible actions and when feeling threatened are also capable of terrible crimes, in the last few years with the recession crime has gone up with kidappings, abuse, and other horrendous atrocities happening almost daily, so how is a civilized society suppoussed to exist if crimes aren't punished in order to keep us civilian population aren't protected?