Artist's record held by criminal courts (8)
I believe the answer is:
sculptor
'artist's' is the definition.
(sculptor is a kind of artist)
'record held by criminal courts' is the wordplay.
'record' becomes 'L-P' (abbreviation for long play record).
'held by' means one lot of letters goes inside another.
'criminal' indicates an anagram.
'courts' is an anagram of 'scutor'.
'lp' placed inside 'scutor' is 'SCULPTOR'.
(Other definitions for sculptor that I've seen before include "Artist who carves" , "Rodin, perhaps" , "Rodin or Behan" , "Epstein,say," , "One as Hepworth, Moore" .)