Are Crimes and Torts Complementary?

It should be remembered that crimes and torts are complementary and not exclusive of each other. Criminal wrongs and civil wrongs are thus not sharply separated groups of acts but are often one and the same act as viewed from different standpoint, the difference being not one of nature but only of relation. To ask concerning any occurrence, "is this a crime or a tort?" is, to borrow Sir James Stephen's apt illustration, no wiser than it would be to ask of a man, "Is he a father or a son? For he may be both." In fact, whatever is within the scope of the penal law is crime, whatever is a ground for a claim of damages, as for an injury, is a tort; but there is no reason why the same act should not belong to both classes, arid many acts do. In fact, some torts or civil injuries were erected and are being erected into crimes, whenever the law-making hand comes to regard the civil remedy for them as being inadequate. But we cannot go so far as to agree with Blackstone when he makes a sweeping observation that "universally every crime is a civil injury." This observation of Blackstone is proved incorrect in the following three offences which do not happen to injure any particular individual. First, a man publishes a seditious libel or enlists recruits for the service of some foreign belligerent. In either of these cases an offence against the state has been committed but no injury is caused to any particular individual. Secondly, an intending forgerer, who is found in possession of a block for the purpose of forging a trade mark or engraving a bank-note or for forging a currency note, commits a serious offence but he causes no injury to any individual. Thirdly, there are cases where though a private individual does actually suffer by the offence, yet the sufferer is no other than the actual criminal himself who, of course, cannot claim compensation against himself, for example, in cases of attempted suicide. However, in England as elsewhere the process of turning of private wrongs into public ones is not yet complete, but it is going forward year to year. For instance, the maiming or killings of another man’s cattle were formerly civil wrongs but they were made crimes in the Hanoverian reign. Then again, it was not until 1857 a crime for a trustee to commit a breach of trust. So also, incest was created a crime in 1908. In fact, the categories of crimes are not closed. In our own country, since Independence, many acts have now been enacted into crimes which we could not even have conceived of, for instance, practice of untouchability or forced labour or marrying below a certain age and so on. A socialistic state does conceive of many anti-social behaviours punishable as crimes more frequently.  

We must remember that crime is a relative concept and a changing one too. Different societies have different views as to what constitutes a criminal act and the conception of a crime may vary with the age, locality and several other facts and circumstances. For example, people were burned for heresy a few centuries ago, but in modern times no civilised nation punishes a man on the ground that he professes a different religious view. Then again, adultery is a crime according to our penal code, while it is a civil wrong according to English law.