Criminal Law as a part of public law determines which acts are criminal offenses, and what sanctions and in which way imposed on perpetrators of crimes for their commission.
In the area of Criminal Law, we distinguish the Substantive Criminal Law and the Procedural Criminal Law. The Substantive Criminal Law specifies which acts and under what conditions are criminal offenses. The Procedural Criminal Law defines competences of prosecuting authorities. The regulation of the criminal law is based on the Act No. 40/2009 Coll., The Criminal Code and the Act No. 141/1961 Coll., The Criminal Procedure Code.
The main goal of criminal law is not only to protect the rights and legitimate interests of the society, physical and legal persons, but also to provide the person, aginst whom the proceedings are conducted a possibility of defence and to ensure an imposition of a legal sanction. One of the positive contributions of the Criminal Law lies in preventive action, both with respect to an individual, i.e., against a specific perpetrator, or in general (against a potential offender, i.e. against society).