The Laws makes clear its commitment to a form of Socratic paradox: no one who is unjust is so voluntarily. I show first how its protagonist – the Athenian Visitor – maintains this position, without resorting to the Socratic thesis that knowingly acting against one's beliefs about what is best is some sort of impossibility, and indeed recognizing the phenomenon of cognitive dissonance. My main concern, however, is with the Athenian's treatment – near the outset of the penology of Book 9 – of what is presented as a serious threat posed by the paradox to any viable theory of criminal behaviour and its punishment; or as he puts it, to the distinction drawn 'in every city and by every legialator there has ever been between two sorts of wrongdoing (adikêmata), voluntary and involuntary'. The Athenian's strategy for resisting the threat (as most commentators note) relies on distinguishing between volutarily harming someone, which requires compensation and often purification, and involuntary commission of injustice, which merits punishment, reconceptualized however as treatment for psychic disease. How far this distinction is successful in defusing the problem is then explored.