Criminal law is that part of public law and its rules determine the general and specific features of human behaviour that display particular moral and social worthlessness (crime). Such behaviour is punishable by the legislator with a specific penalty (criminal penalty). Criminal law embodies and reflects socially determined judgments that some forms of behaviour should be authoritatively proscribed. Nevertheless, there is no simple way of defining what kind of behaviour is criminal since this may vary between different countries and over time.
Crime is a specific pathological social phenomenon that consists of a particularly intolerable moral breach of any of the basic rules of human behaviour which exist to sustain smooth social synchronicity. A crime is a form of behaviour, which is punishable with criminal sanctions. Thus, the concept of crime seems to include in its definition the criminal penalty, where the prediction of the latter gives to the former a degree of legitimacy.
Therefore, criminal law in the broad sense of the term is the branch of law, which has as its object the complete investigation of the ‘criminal phenomenon’. This wide conception entails that substantive criminal law contains all those rules of law which govern the exercise of criminal power by the State at all levels. The substantive part of criminal law is the body of rules that determines rights and duties, such as crimes and punishment, while the procedural law is the machinery for enforcing those rights and duties. The substantive criminal law of Cyprus is provided by the Criminal Code (Cap. 154), whereas criminal proceedings are provided by the Criminal Procedure Law (Cap. 155).
