I. The word crime appears in a wide range of contexts, both in technical (e.g. moral philosophy or history) and everyday usage; it is especially common in the usage of practical ethics. The term is defined more closely in the various fields of criminal law, both normative (criminal law dogmatics as the theory of positive criminal law, criminal policy) and empirical (criminology).
II. Normative criminal law commonly distinguishes between formal and material concepts of crime, although the exact boundary between them is a matter of debate, as …