KEY CONCEPTS

Criminology

• An interdisciplinary applied discipline within the human sciences

• Its field of study includes the scientific study of crime, offenders and victims, the punishment of offenders, and the prevention and control of crime

The law

• a written statute enacted by those legislative bodies that have the authority to make laws

Criminal law

• made up of all the legal rules that identify crimes and set down punishments

Common law

• legal rules that were not originally written down but which have come to be accepted as the law of the land