The Criminalization series arose from an interdisciplinary investigation into criminalization, focusing on the principles that might guide decisions about what kinds of conduct should be criminalized, and the forms that criminalization should take. Developing a normative theory of criminalization, the series tackles the key questions at the heart of the issue: what principles and goals should guide legislators in deciding what to criminalize? How should criminal wrongs be classified and differentiated? How should law enforcement officials apply the law's specifications of offences?
The...

We are said to face a crisis of over-criminalization: our criminal law has become chaotic, unprincipled, and over-expansive. This book proposes a theory of criminal law, as an institution that can play an important but limited role in the civil order of a political community: it shows how criminal law could be ordered, principled, and restrained.