Criminal laws are the set of rules whose purpose is to establish or describe the type of conduct that has been classified as a crime. The Penal Code is the federal law that establishes illegal conduct in the United States. Once the crime is determined, there is a set of legal provisions for each criminal type and class of penalty, an example of this can be found in the following laws regarding “theft” that are taken from the Penal Code of the State of California :
Art. 459. Any person who enters a dwelling, room, apartment, tenement house, tenement house, warehouse, warehouse, factory, barn, stable, latrine or other building, tent, boat, etc., with the intention of committing grand or petty theft or a felony is guilty of residential burglary.