Penrose described an observation in 1939, according to which an inverse relationship between the size of prison populations and the number of psychiatric beds existed. The purpose of this article was to investigate the validity of this statement for Hungary. The national data between 1989 and 2017 for 25 variables were extracted from the official reports of the Hungarian Central Statistical Office. The number of psychiatric beds decreased by 33%, while the number of prisoners increased by about 50%. At the same time, the number of mentally ill patients under compulsive treatment was low, but showed a slight, statistically significant increase. Variables measuring similar feature, for example, the psychiatric characteristics (alcoholics registered, suicide rate, number of hospital beds, welfare home inmates) are variables consistently moving in one direction or the other that may allow finding appropriate indicators of and explanations for the phenomena. An example is the number of psychiatric beds showing a parallel decrease to the numbers of total hospital beds, registered alcoholics, out-patient clinics for children, and suicide rate, and just the opposite direction with forensic settling, involuntary admissions, and welfare home inmates. Similarly, crimes, criminals, homicides, and prisoners can also be grouped. Correlation does not mean a cause and effect relationship, therefore, at the current state of knowledge the connection among variables is not clear in all the cases. To sum up, Hungarian statistical data for three decades support Penrose's original observation on psychiatric beds and prison population, while the Penrose's statement on the inverse relationship between the number of crimes and of psychiatric beds is not supported. However, until deeper relationships are explored, aggregation of variables into few factors seems impossible.

彭罗斯（Penrose）在1939年描述了一项观察，根据该观察，监狱人口规模与精神病床数量之间存在反比关系。本文的目的是调查该声明对匈牙利的有效性。1989年至2017年之间的25个变量的国家数据摘自匈牙利中央统计局的官方报告。精神病床的数量减少了33％，而囚犯的数量增加了约50％。同时，接受强迫治疗的精神病患者人数很少，但有统计学上的显着增加。衡量相似特征的变量，例如，精神特征（注册的酒鬼，自杀率，病床数量，福利院的囚犯）是不断向一个方向或向另一个方向移动的变量，可以为该现象找到适当的指标和解释。一个例子是精神病床的数量与总的病床数量，注册的酗酒者，儿童的门诊诊所和自杀率呈平行下降趋势，而法医安置，非自愿入院和福利院的囚犯则恰好相反。同样，犯罪，罪犯，凶杀案和囚犯也可以分组。相关性并不意味着因果关系，因此，在当前的知识状态下，变量之间的联系在所有情况下都不是很清楚。总结起来，匈牙利过去三十年来的统计数据支持了彭罗斯最初关于精神病床和监狱人口的观察，彭罗斯（Penrose）关于犯罪数量与精神病床数量成反比关系的说法不被支持。但是，在探索更深层次的关系之前，将变量聚合为很少的因素似乎是不可能的。