This chapter describes the policies, laws, and regulations which govern Ghana’s artisanal and small-scale gold mining (ASGM). The illegal, ungovernable, chaotic, and destructive ASGM sector being witnessed in Ghana today foregrounds a fundamental question of governance: whether laws and institutions exist to steer the sector in the direction of law and order; to steer it to a regulated, formal, and sustainable livelihood activity or otherwise. In this chapter, we argue that the horrendous environmental damage that Ghana has witnessed in the ASGM sector, especially between 2017 and 2024, did not happen because the industry lacks a governance system to regulate it. Instead, it happened in the context of comprehensive regulation, with a panoply of policies, laws, and institutions governing it. Indeed, Ghana has put in place some of the most comprehensive and dynamic ASM laws in the world, yet impunity characterizes the ASGM sector. Both the colonial state of the Gold Coast and post-independence Ghanaian state designed a panoply of laws and regulations for the comprehensive governance of minerals and mining in the country. A good number of these laws cover the regulation of the artisanal and small-scale mining (ASM) sector, particularly gold mining. For example, PNDC Law 217 regulated the use of mercury in ASM; PNDC Law 218 (The Small-Scale Gold Mining Law 1989) legalized ASM and introduced a licensing process; and PNDC Law 219, created the Precious Minerals Marketing Corporation, a state enterprise authorized to buy gold, including gold produced from ASM. In addition, there are state institutions designed specifically to enforce the laws and regulations governing mining and to take administrative measures to ensure order and sanity in the sector. These have been augmented by the presence of generic state institutions like the Ghana Police Service and the Judicial Service of Ghana which enforce and adjudicate the laws of Ghana, including those related to mining. Against this background, this chapter demonstrates that the informality and criminality that characterize the sector, particularly in the capitalist medium-scale mining (CMM), happen not because of the lack of a governance system, but rather despite the existence of it. There is a quintessential paradox at hand here: Ghana has a well-governed ASGM industry which is characterized by chaos, criminality, and catastrophic environmental destruction and human development atrocities. State capture, as we illustrate in this book, is characterized by paradoxes and internal contradictions like this one.