  The view described in the previous paragraph conceives of criminal law as an instrument of the community—a way of ensuring that the community gets what it is owed from wrongdoers. Call it the communitarian view. If we combine this with the curial view, the distinctive function of criminal law is to seek answers owed to the community as a whole. One might doubt that the functions of criminal and civil law can be so neatly distinguished. It is arguable that civil law sometimes responds to wrongs on behalf of all of us—civil proceedings can be brought against \(D\) on the basis that her conduct is a nuisance to the public at large, or on the basis that \(D\) is a public official whose conduct is an abuse of power. More importantly, one might claim that in the case of paradigmatic crimes—like robbery, rape, or battery—criminal law responds to wrongs on behalf of particular individuals—on behalf of those who have been robbed, raped, or battered. On this view, a positive case for criminalization need not await the finding that \(D\) owes something to the whole community. It is at least sometimes enough that \(D\) owes something to those \(D\) has wronged, which \(D\) would fail to provide in the absence of criminal proceedings.