Virtuous English AcademyCrime & Law — B1 English Vocabulary
This B1 vocabulary list gathers 40 intermediate English words about crime & law — crime, justice and the courtroom. Every word comes with a simple definition, its British-English pronunciation and a natural example sentence, so you learn each one in real context. When you are ready, open the flashcards to practise and remember them for good.
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Using crime & law words in English
Legal vocabulary rewards precision because the words are technical and the mistakes are noticeable. The single most persistent error at this level is confusing steal and rob, which differ not in meaning but in what they take as an object. Close behind it is evidence, which is uncountable in English no matter how many pieces of it a case contains — a fact that catches out learners in almost every language.
What to watch out for
You steal a thing but rob a person or place
They stole my bicycle — the object is what was taken. They robbed me, They robbed the bank — the object is the victim or the location. So They stole the bank would mean they carried the building away, and They robbed my bicycle is not English at all. The nouns follow the same split: a theft of property, a robbery at a bank, and a burglary when someone breaks into a house.
Evidence cannot be counted
Say The evidence is strong and There is not enough evidence. There is no an evidence and no evidences. For one item use a piece of evidence. The same is true of proof. By contrast, a witness and a crime are both perfectly countable, which is why this particular noun trips people up.
Commit a crime, guilty of, arrested for
The collocations are fixed and worth memorising as blocks: you commit a crime, you are arrested for it, charged with it, found guilty of it and then sentenced to a punishment. The opposite of guilty is innocent, but the court verdict is not guilty. And in British English the jury takes a plural verb: The jury are still deliberating.
Words learners mix up
Three tables: who is who in a British courtroom, the four stages a person passes through from suspicion to conviction, and the four nouns that describe what happens afterwards.
Who is who in a British courtroom
| Word | What it actually means | In a sentence |
|---|---|---|
| judge | Runs the trial, decides questions of law and passes the sentence. Also a verb, and the noun judgement keeps its e in general British use. | The judge adjourned the case until Monday. |
| jury | Twelve ordinary people who decide only whether the facts are proved. They reach a verdict, not a sentence. | The jury retired to consider its verdict. |
| lawyer | The general word. Britain splits the job into a solicitor, who advises, and a barrister, who argues in court. | She hired a lawyer the same afternoon. |
| witness | Somebody who saw what happened and describes it under oath. The verb means simply to see something happen. | Two witnesses gave evidence. |
The split between verdict and sentence is the useful thing here, and it maps onto the two people: the jury says guilty or not guilty, and the judge decides what follows. The solicitor and barrister division is purely British and has no American equivalent, which is why American films only ever have lawyers and attorneys.
From suspicion to conviction: four stages
| Word | What it actually means | In a sentence |
|---|---|---|
| suspect | Somebody the police think may be responsible. Stress on the first syllable as a noun and the second as a verb. | Police have released the suspect without charge. |
| accuse | To say publicly that somebody did it. The offence takes of and an -ing form: accused of stealing. | He was accused of taking the money. |
| innocent | Not guilty. English says innocent until proven guilty, and the court verdict itself is not guilty. | She has always maintained that she is innocent. |
| convict | To find officially guilty. As a noun, with the stress moved forward, it means somebody serving a prison term. | He was convicted on all three counts. |
The preposition changes at every stage and none of them can be guessed: you are suspected of, accused of, charged with and convicted of an offence, but arrested for one. Learning the four as a sequence is far more efficient than meeting them separately, because a news report will use all of them about one person within a few paragraphs.
What happens afterwards
| Word | What it actually means | In a sentence |
|---|---|---|
| sentence | The punishment the judge decides. The verb is pass or hand down, and it is countable. | He received a five-year sentence. |
| punishment | The general idea, uncountable, though a punishment for one specific penalty is fine. | The punishment seemed far too light. |
| prison | No article when it means serving a term: sent to prison. With an article it means the building. | He spent two years in prison. |
| release | Noun and verb with one spelling. It takes from, and the phrase is released on bail. | She was released after six months. |
Sentence is a genuine trap because its other meaning — a group of words ending in a full stop — is the one learners meet first, and the two share nothing. The article rule on prison belongs to a small British family: in hospital, at school, in prison drop the article when you mean the purpose, and take it back when you mean the building itself.
Collocations that sound natural
Six words from news reports and court coverage. Each is locked into a small number of phrases, and reading a British newspaper is far easier once these are recognised whole.
trial
stand trialgo on triala fair trialon trial for murder
The preposition is on for the person and for for the offence. Stand trial has no article at all, which is unusual, and a fair trial is a fixed phrase carrying the whole idea of legal rights.
offence
commit an offencea serious offencea first offencecause offence
Britain spells it with a c and America with an s. Two senses share the word: a crime, which is countable, and hurt feelings, which is uncountable — so cause offence and take offence have nothing to do with the law.
violence
an outbreak of violencedomestic violenceresort to violenceviolence broke out
Uncountable, so never violences and never a violence. The countable unit is an act of violence. Note that the adjective violent describes both people and events, while violently often just means very suddenly.
weapon
carry a weapona deadly weaponthe murder weaponlay down their weapons
Countable, and the verb is carry rather than have in legal English, because carrying one is itself the offence. British reporting says a bladed weapon for a knife, and weapon is stressed on the first syllable with a silent a sound.
victim
fall victim tothe victims of the attacka murder victimvictim support
The phrase fall victim to takes no article before the noun, which is unusual and worth memorising whole. British policing and charity language uses victim support as a fixed compound for the help offered afterwards.
investigate
investigate a crimeunder investigationa police investigationthoroughly investigate
The verb takes a direct object with no preposition. The noun phrase under investigation means the process is going on and no conclusion has been reached, which is why it appears in careful journalism about people not yet charged.
Where each word belongs
Seven words carrying a second meaning, a spelling difference or a level of formality. Legal vocabulary crosses into everyday English constantly, and the everyday sense is usually the weaker one.
- legalTwo senses that look alikeIt means permitted by law — perfectly legal — but also simply relating to law, as in legal advice, the legal system and a legal document. The second sense carries no approval at all, so legal costs are just the costs of using lawyers.
- criminalNoun, adjective, and an exaggerationAs a noun it names the person and as an adjective it describes the offence: criminal damage, a criminal record. British speech also uses it as pure hyperbole — the price of tickets is criminal — which is entirely informal and never appears in writing.
- justiceUncountable · and a job titleUncountable as an idea, so bring somebody to justice and a sense of justice take no article. Capitalised it is a judicial title in senior British and American courts. The related adjective is just, which is now formal and slightly literary.
- fraudUncountable and countable, with a person hidden insideUncountable for the offence — commit fraud, tax fraud — and countable for one scheme. It also names a person who is pretending to be something they are not, so he is a complete fraud is an insult rather than a charge.
- securityUncountable · and the people at the doorUncountable when it means safety or protective measures: security is tight. British English also uses it as a plural-in-meaning word for the staff themselves, as in security stopped him, which takes no article and no -s.
- escapeVerb with and without fromYou escape from a prison but simply escape punishment or injury. Both patterns are correct and they mean slightly different things — leaving a place needs from, avoiding a consequence does not. The noun is countable: a lucky escape.
- threatenTwo structures, two meaningsThreaten to do something is a promise of harm from a person. Threaten somebody with names the harm. There is also a weather and risk sense with no intention behind it: the strike threatens to disrupt travel, where nobody is making a threat at all.
Sentences to try
Four frames following a case from start to finish. Notice which preposition each stage takes.
- Someone stole my phone on the train.
- He was arrested for a crime he did not commit.
- The evidence against her was not strong enough.
- The jury found the defendant not guilty.
Questions about crime & law vocabulary
What is the difference between steal and rob?
The difference is the object of the verb, not the meaning. Steal takes the thing that was taken: They stole my laptop. Rob takes the person or place that lost it: They robbed the shop, I was robbed. So the same event gives Someone stole my wallet and Someone robbed me, both correct, and Someone robbed my wallet, which is not. The related nouns split the same way: theft for the taking, robbery for the attack on a person or place, and burglary for breaking into a building.
Can I say "evidences" in English?
No. Evidence is uncountable, so it never takes -s and never takes an: The evidence was overwhelming, There is little evidence for that claim. To refer to individual items use a piece of evidence or two pieces of evidence. Proof, information, advice and research all behave the same way. This is worth drilling because the plural form exists in most other European languages and feels entirely natural to produce.
Do I say "guilty of" or "guilty for"?
Guilty of. The pattern is found guilty of murder, guilty of a serious offence. Guilty about exists but refers to the feeling rather than the verdict: I feel guilty about forgetting her birthday. The surrounding legal collocations are equally fixed and best learned together: arrested for, charged with, accused of, convicted of, sentenced to. Note that the courtroom opposite of guilty is not guilty rather than innocent.