Abstract
In recent decades, Dutch legislators have increasingly criminalised behaviour that does not yet in itself cause harm or injury, but mainly creates danger. Consider the introduction of the general criminalisation of preparatory acts and the independent criminalisation of terrorist financing, grooming, training for terrorism, and the extension of the collusion regime. Due to these so-called pre-harm offences, criminal law is increasingly concerned with situations that primarily involve a risk of future harm or injury.
This research study focuses on how such pre-harm offences should be assessed in the light of four classic principles of substantive criminal law: the actus reus principle, the substantive unlawfulness principle, the ultimum remedium principle, and the lex certa principle. For example, how does criminalisation of pre-harm offences relate to the principle that criminal law is concerned only with behaviour, and not with thoughts and intentions? Is behaviour that creates danger actually punishable as such? Is criminal law really the appropriate tool for responding to danger? And to what extent is it possible to formulate and delineate such criminalisation with sufficient clarity? Through different political-philosophical perspectives on these questions, the limits of criminal law in the pre-harm phase are explored.
