A description of the current criminal code of the Russian Federation and how crimes are categorized. The work covers such topics as the concept and importance of categorizing crimes; the content of crimes; the object of a crime; the objective aspect of criminal content; the subject of a crime; the subjective aspect of criminal content; crimes not completed; criminal accomplices; negative characteristics of criminal content envisioned by the standards of the general and the specific sections of the criminal code of the Russian Federation; rules for categorizing crimes.