ABSTRACT. Richards holds that the tasks of criminal law theory appear to be both explanatory and normative, concerned with both understanding and recommendations for change. Richards views both the criminal law and the remedies of the civil law as means of enforcement (certain moral rights relating to keeping informal promises and the like may not be appropriately enforced either by the criminal or civil law). Cruft says that a view that is closer to the moral truth will accept that whenever a crime is committed, we all bear some communal responsibility for it, because the crime has been committed by one of ‘us’. Cruft maintains that individualistic liberalism lends support to the authoritarian view that being concerned for the perpetrator, or seeing her as one of us, will necessarily result in implausibly lenient punishments.