Preventive Offenses II: Possession

Abstract This chapter, the second chapter on preventive offenses, focuses on possession offenses, especially laws criminalizing possession of guns, certain addictive drugs, and child pornography. This chapter argues that the laws that criminalize possession serve many different purposes. First, it is a way of identifying those about to harm other people, especially when intent to harm is present or thought to be present. Second, it is a regulatory mechanism that disallows some people from possessing something in order to reduce the amount of risk from potentially harmful objects, like guns. Third, it is a tool the government enlists to fight the existence of markets that harm society, such as those for child pornography or illicit drugs. Despite the variety, what these offenses have in common is that they are all best understood as disobedience offenses. That is, the laws do not criminalize the wrong of harming or risking harm to others but rather criminalize the wrong of interfering with the government’s attempt to reduce the overall amount of harm in society.