Criminal and Moral Wrongs

 Criminal and Moral Wrongs:

A criminal wrong may also be distinguished from a moral wrong. 

It is narrower in extent than a moral wrong. In no age or in any nation an attempt has ever been made to treat every moral wrong as a crime.

 In a crime an idea of some definite gross undeniable injury to someone is involved. 

Some definite overt act is necessary, but do we punish a person for ingratitude, hard-heartedness, absence of natural affection, habitual idleness, avarice, sensuality and pride, 

which are all instances of moral lapses? 

They might be subject of confession and penance but not criminal proceeding. 

The criminal law, therefore, has a limited scope. It applies only to definite acts of commission and omission, capable of being distinctly proved. 

These acts of commission and omission cause definite evils either on definite persons or on the community at large.

 Within these narrow limits there may be a likeness between criminal law and morality. 

For instance, offences like murder, rape, arson, robbery, theft and the like are equally abhorred by law and morality. 

On the other hand, there are many acts which are not at all immoral, nonetheless they are criminal. 

For example, breaches of statutory 

regulations and bye laws are classed as criminal offences, although they do 

not involve the slightest moral blame. So also “the failure to have a proper 

light on a bicycle or keeping of a pig in a wrong place," or the neglect in 

breach of a bye-law to cause a child to attend school during the whole of the 

ordinary school hours; and conversely many acts of great immorality are not 

criminal offences, as for example, adultery in England, or incest in India. 

However, whenever law and morals unite in condemning an act, the 

punishment for the act is enhanced.

Stephen on the relationship between criminal law and morality observes:

The relation between criminal law and morality is not in all cases the 

same. The two may harmonise; there may be a conflict between them, or 

they may be independent. In all common cases they do, and, in my 

opinion, wherever and so far as it is possible, they ought to harmonise with 

and support one another. Everything which is regarded as enhancing the 

moral guilt of a particular offence is recognised as a reason for increasing 

the severity of the punishment awarded to it. On the other hand, the 

sentence of the law is to the moral sentiment of the public in relation to 

any offence what a seal is to hot wax.

 It converts into a permanent final judgement what might otherwise be a transient sentiment. 

The mere 

general suspicion or knowledge that a man has done something dishonest 

may never be brought to a point, and the disapprobation excited by it may 

in time pass away, but the fact that he has been convicted and punished as

a thief stamps a mark upon him for life. In short, the infliction of 

punishment by law gives definite expression and a solemn ratification and 

a justification to the hatred which is excited by the commission of the offence, and which constitutes the ll1oral or popular as distinguished from 

the conscientious sanction of that part of morality which is also sanctioned by the criminal law. 

The crill1inal law thus proceeds upon the principle that it is ll1orally right to hate crill1inals, and it confirms and justifies that sentill1ent by inflicting upon criminals punishments which express it.