Since the federal government of the United States does not have a generalized police power like that of the states, the scope of its criminal statutes is necessarily circumscribed. Ordinary prosecutions are the province of the states, and only crimes of special federal import are pursued by the federal government. Consequently, Title 18 of the United States Code does not use the aforementioned culpability scheme but relies instead on more traditional definitions of crimes taken from common law. For example, "malice aforethought" is used as a requirement for committing capital murder.