Crime exists in our world, and you just cannot get away from that. It seems like every evening most of the nightly news is focused on all of the different crimes that have been committed.

In fact, there is an entire sub set of law that is dedicated to crimes. The criminal law field is actually a very specialized field.

Criminal law is also known as penal law in some circles. It is technically defined as “bodies of rules in different jurisdictions whose common characteristic is the potential for unique and often severe impositions as punishment for failure to comply.”

What that basically means is that criminal law is the area of law that focuses on the crimes that result from laws being broken .

Criminal law will dictate what the actual laws are, and perhaps most importantly the punishments for the crimes committed. Some of the most common crimes that fall into this category are murder, rape, and aggravated assault to name a few.

There is some distinction within the laws as to the difference between a petty crime, like shoplifting, and a violent crime, like homicide. There are many lawyers who specialize in prosecuting or defending criminal law cases as they quite often require different types of evidence than say a divorce proceeding.