There are currently more than 2,000,000 inmates in jails and prisons in the United States, or about 1 person in every 138 of the population (to say nothing of the large number on probation and on parole). By contrast, in Australia, for example, only about one person in every 1,500 of the population is currently in prison. The two prison populations do share at least one significant feature in common, namely, a massive over-representation of a minority group within the total population. In the of the U.S., it is those with an African-American heritage (who constitute about 13% of the nation's population but make up almost half of the total prison population), and in Australia it is those with an Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander heritage (who, despite constituting less than 3% of the total population, account for about 40% of the nation's--and an appalling 80% of the Northern Territory's--prison population). However, in the present context, it is not this shared feature on which I wish to focus attention; rather, it is the discrepancy in the rates of incarceration. The enormity of the discrepancy cries out for explanation given the many cultural and socio-economic similarities that the two nations share. In his stimulating book Overcriminalization: The Limits of the Criminal Law, (1) Douglas Husak claims that, at least in the U.S., a major (even if not the only) factor contributing to the high numbers in prison is what he terms 'overcriminalization' on the part of legislatures, namely, the enactment by them of too many criminal laws. To oversimplify his argument somewhat, his bold thesis is that this excess of laws has contributed to an increase in the number of violations of criminal laws, which, in turn, has resulted in the meting out of too much criminal punishment (in particular, too much imprisonment). Furthermore, this overcriminalization has caused serious injustices to become endemic within the criminal law system (because of problems in fairly enforcing the excessive numbers of laws). He advances what he terms a presumptive and intuitive case (2) in support of these contentions and then argues that one way of reducing overcriminalization is to require that criminal laws be subject to a series of constraints that would serve to limit the sorts of conduct that justifiably expose offenders to punishment by the state. He proposes four constraints that he characterizes as internal to the criminal law and three that are external to it, though he acknowledges that the distinction is somewhat artificial because the categories will sometimes overlap. (Since details of the constraints have been set out in the Introduction to this symposium, (3) I will not restate them here.) According to Husak, the seven constraints are individually and severally necessary if overcriminalization is to be reined in. In addition to mounting powerful arguments for the plausibility of each of the constraints, he contends that requiring their satisfaction would do much to rid the criminal law of some of its more egregious injustices. In particular, he claims that requiring the satisfaction of his seven constraints would lead to the proscription of indefensible strict liability and criminal paternalism offenses, and to a dramatic reduction in the number of mala prohibita (4) and risk-creation offenses presently authorized in statutes. As regards these latter, Husak does not want to deny a place among justifiable criminal law statutes to all mala prohibita and risk-creation offenses, (5) but his detailed consideration of specific examples of such offenses is aimed at showing that the onus should be shouldered by those who advocate their retention within the criminal law. Thus, for instance, he contends that the mandatory imposition of criminal punishment on persons who engage in consensual sexual intercourse with minors (which in U.S. jurisdictions constitutes statutory rape) would be unjustifiable in light of his proposed constraints because in instances involving minors who are capable of giving consent their consensual participation would afford the defendant a complete defense. …