- •Crime & Punishment
- •Unit 1. The Language of Law
- •I. Memorize the following words and phrases and give their Russian equivalents.
- •Translate the following sentences into Russian.
- •Complete the following text with the words given. Speak about practicing lawyers in England.
- •Before reading the text try to define the role of Criminal Law in society.
- •Unit 2. Crime
- •Find the Russian equivalents for the following words and phrases. Try to give a definition to the term crime.
- •Read and translate the following text. Types of Crimes
- •The table below gives the names of some types of crimes. Complete it with their definitions, the names of the persons who commit them and their associated verbs.
- •Read the following text and speak about the crime rate, its tendencies, the causes of crime in your country, and possible ways of crime prevention.
- •V. Criminal law is gradually changing. One of the reasons is that different societies continually review their ideas of what should and should not be considered a crime.
- •Unit 3. Court of Law
- •Memorise the words and expressions given. Pay attention to the articles.
- •You will find a few other useful words in the following text. Read it and speak about the legal system in England and Wales.
- •Translate the sentences into Russian.
- •Read the text and compare the legal system in the United States with the legal system in England and Wales.
- •Learn some more useful words and expressions that haven’t been used in the texts.
- •Choose one of the words from the list above to complete each of the sentences.
- •Translate the following into English.
- •Unit 4. Punishment
- •I. Here are some words connected with punishment. Try to find their Russian equivalents. If necessary, use a dictionary.
- •Read and translate the following text. Punishment
- •Sentencing
- •The Death Penalty
- •Prisons
- •Alternatives to Prison
- •Discuss the answers to these questions.
- •Translate the sentences into English.
- •Unit 4. Revision Exercises
- •Choose the most appropriate word in each sentence.
- •Complete each sentence by putting one or two suitable prepositions in each space.
- •Complete each sentence with a compound word formed from the word in capitals.
- •Choose the most suitable word.
- •Replace the bold words with their synonyms.
- •Restore the text by choosing the most suitable word for each space.
- •197110, СПб, б. Разночинная, д. 27
Unit 4. Punishment
I. Here are some words connected with punishment. Try to find their Russian equivalents. If necessary, use a dictionary.
sentence (give/pass/pronounce) - a punishment a judge gives to someone who has been declared guilty of a crime; heavy/severe/light/lenient sentence; life sentence; death sentence; serve a sentence; suspended sentence;
penalty (for) – a punishment for breaking a law, rule, or legal agreement; impose a penalty; stiff/heavy penalty; the death penalty; penal (only before noun) – connected with the legal punishment of criminals, especially in prison: penal reform, the penal system, penal colony/settlement; penal servitude – a period of being kept in prison with hard physical work;
penitentiary n. – a prison, especially in the USA;
capital punishment – punishment by legal killing;
corporal punishment – a way of officially punishing someone by hitting them, especially in schools and prisons;
fine – money that you have to pay as a punishment;
probation – a system that allows some criminals not to go to prison, if they behave well and see a probation officer regularly, for a fixed period of time; be/put sb on probation;
to convict – to prove or officially announce that someone is guilty of a crime after a trial; be convicted of sth; n. convict;
to acquit (sb of sth) – to give a decision in a court of law that someone is not guilty of a crime;
Read and translate the following text. Punishment
is the infliction of some kind of pain or loss upon a person for a misdeed, i.e., the transgression of a law or command. Punishment may take forms varying from capital punishment, flogging, and mutilation of the body to imprisonment, fines, and even deferred sentences that come into operation only if an offence is repeated within a specified time.
In primitive society, punishment was left to the individuals wronged or to their families and was vindictive or retributive: in quantity and quality it would bear no special relation to the character or gravity of the offence.
Even at the legal stage the vindictive or retributive character of punishment remains, but gradually, and especially after the humanist movement, new theories begin to emerge. On the one hand, the retributive principle itself has been very largely superseded by the protective and the reformative; on the other, punishments involving bodily pain have become objectionable to the general sense of society. Consequently corporal and even capital punishment occupy a far less prominent position now than in earlier times. It began to be recognized also that stereotyped punishments, such as belong to penal codes, fail to take due account of the particular condition of an offence and the character and circumstances of the offender. A fixed fine, for example, operates very unequally on rich and poor.
Modern theories date from the 18th century, when the humanitarian movement began to teach the dignity of the individual and to emphasize his rationality and responsibility. The result was the reduction of punishment both in quantity and in severity, the improvement of the prison system, and the first attempts to study the psychology of crime and to distinguish between classes of criminals with a view to their improvement.