Vocabulary notes

bizarre to haunt	причудливый, странный преследовать, часто посещать
larceny	воровство
misconception	неправильное представление
to limp	медленно двигаться, плестись
to reckon	считать
to impose	облагать, налагать
nightmare	кошмар
punitive	карательный
loathing	отвращение, ненависть

Task 3. Read the text again and make sure you know all underlined parts of the text. Give their Russian equivalents

Task 4. Answer the following questions:

1. What does this passage mainly discuss?

2. What is the Americans’ attitude to serial killers?

3. How many people actually become victims of serial murder­ers?

4. What are Americans’ widely-held beliefs?

5. Is America more criminal than other countries?

6. What questions do American misconceptions raise?

7. Why are Americans so afraid of crime?

Task 5. Read the following statements. Agree or disagree with them. Give arguments to prove your point.

1. America loves its myths.

2. According to cool-headed academic research, maybe 4000 people a year are victims of serial murder­ers.

3. America has experienced a crime wave in the past 30 years.

4. America is obviously more criminal than anywhere else.

5. Ameri­cans are very rational in their attitudes to crime.

6. Americans are not afraid of crime.

Task 6. Compose the questions. Use the following words and phrases from the text

to haunt one’s imagination, to be attributable to, to turn out to, cool-headed academic research, ordinary folk, a crime wave, to follow a pattern, to be indecently assaulted, to commit an offence, to fear, loathing

Task 7. Explain in English what the words and word combinations mean. Use them in your own sentences

Serial killers, myths, to haunt, extraordinary, vio­lent crime, misconception, priority, punitive, irrational, inner cities, crime policy, burglary, Gallup polls, nightmare

Task 8. Practice the speech patterns given below. Make up two sentences of your own on each pattern

1. It is hardly surprising that Americans should fear the spread of crime. But it remains surprising that American public attitudes should be so different from those in other countries which also have dangerous inner cities.

2. There seems to be something else feeding Americans' fear and loathing of criminals. American crime policy seems to have become an area where the arguments ad­mittedly often complex and finely bal­anced take second place to the lobbying. Crack con­sumption seems to be falling.

3. You are more likely to be robbed with violence in Spain; you are more likely to be robbed without violence in Spain, Canada, Australia and New Zealand. You are more likely to be raped or indecently assaulted in Canada, Australia or western Germany. Competition is likely to inspire new systems for delivering legal services, such as group insurance programs.

4. It is with these that America's real crime-policy problems begin. It is the irrationality of such violence that terrifies.

5. Non-violent property crimes (theft, larceny and burglary) have followed similar patterns. So has murder, its peak was in 1980. Many legal scholars regard the right of privacy as inherent in the Bill of Rights. So does Justice Brandeis. They are all vulnerable to invasions of privacy. So are we.

Task 9. Make the summary of the text. Use the key words and word combinations

Text 2

Task 1. Answer the questions:

1. What’s the difference between violent and non-violent crimes?

2. What crimes would you call violent?

3. What can stop a criminal from using unnecessary violence?

Task 2. Read the text to get the main idea paying special attention to the underlined parts of the text (key words and word combinations)

Murder as public choice

America tops the developed-country crime league only in one category: murder. While you are more likely to be burgled in Sydney — than in Los Angeles, you are 20 times more likely to be murdered in Los Angeles than you are in Sydney.

American crime is not only more vio­lent; it is also irrational in its violence. Think about a person held up at gunpoint who fails to co-operate with a robber. "Since both the risk of apprehension and the potential punishment escalate when the victim is killed," says Franklin Zimring, a criminologist at the University of Califor­nia, Berkeley, "the rational robber would be well advised to meet flight or refusal by avoiding conflict and seeking another vic­tim." Yet Americans commonly get killed in these circumstances, and it is the irrationality of such violence that terrifies.

There is nothing odd or surprising in the observation that America is more vio­lent than other countries, that Americans are more afraid of crime, and they are there­fore more punitive. But the problem with America's criminal-justice policy lies in that sequence of thought. By eliding vio­lence and crime, Americans fail to identify the problem that sets them apart from the rest of the rich world, which is violence, rather than crime generally. Americans are right to think they have a special problem of violence. They are wrong to think their country is being overwhelmed by crime of every sort. Yet because many people do think that, they are throwing their weight behind indiscriminate policies which, at huge cost, bludgeon crime as a whole but fail to tackle the problem of violence.

America now imprisons seven times as many people (proportionately) as does the average European country, largely as a re­sult of get-tough-on-crime laws. These are the laws other countries are now studying with admiration.

First came mandatory sentencing laws, requiring courts to impose minimum sen­tences on offenders for particular crimes. Michigan, for instance, has a mandatory life sentence for an offender caught with 650 grams of cocaine. A federal law condemns anybody convicted of possession of more than five grams of crack to a mini­mum of five years in prison.

Then came "three-strike laws", sup­ported by Bill Clinton and adopted by 20-odd states and the federal government. These impose a mandatory life sentence on anybody convicted of a third felony. The seriousness of the felony, and therefore the impact of the law, varies from state to state. In California, in the most celebrated case, a man who stole a pizza as his third felony got life. His case was extreme, but not unique: another man got life after stealing three steaks.