  If the public/private distinction is cashed out in terms of primary duties, then responding to public wrongs cannot be distinctive of criminal law. Many wrongs are both crimes and torts. So the two bodies of law often respond to breaches of the same primary duty. A more promising proposal looks to secondary duties. Perhaps criminal law’s distinctive function is to respond to wrongs on behalf of us all—to discharge secondary duties owed to the community as a whole (Duff 2011, 140). Perhaps the function of civil law is to respond to wrongs on behalf of some of us—to discharge secondary duties owed to particular individuals. This might be thought to explain why criminal proceedings, unlike civil proceedings, are controlled by state officials: why officials can initiate proceedings that individual victims oppose, and discontinue proceedings that victims initiate.