"Where criminal law interferes with the private lives of autonomous individuals, a certain paradox arises when we look at the legal systems and culture of civil law states and common law states. In the latter, we find on the one hand, greater hostility to the state and scepticism of its right to interfere in the lives of individuals. Yet, on the other hand, it is in the “arm length” state that greater intervention through the use of criminal law in the private sphere is usually to be found. Can it be that the “arm's length” state relies upon criminal law not only because of a different conception of (the relationship between the individual and) the state and the resulting absence of legal-theoretical barriers to state interference, but because it lacks, for precisely that reason, other, more subtle, mechanisms of intervention? And can it also be that, as the nation state declines (albeit slowly) in importance, as individuals redefine their relationship to state and society and demand greater autonomy in their own lives and yet more intervention by the state in the autonomous lives of others, the significance of those other mechanisms of intervention will also decline?"