Vocabulary notes

To hold up at gunpoint	держать на мушке, держать под прицелом
to escalate	увеличиваться, возрастать
to meet flight	обратиться в бегство
to elide	обходить молчанием
to overwhelm	овладевать, переполнять
apprehension	арест
to bludgeon	бить дубинкой
to tackle the problem	взяться за решение задачи
mandatory	обязательный

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 is the peculiarity of American crime in general?

2. What terrifies Americans most of all?

3. What are Americans right and wrong about when it comes to the problem of violence?

4. What problem sets them apart from the rest of the rich world?

5. What get-tough-on-crime laws are now in force in the USA?

6. What do three-strike laws mean?

Task 5. Agree or disagree with the following statements:

1. American crime is vio­lent and irrational in its violence.

2. There is something odd and surprising in the observation that America is more vio­lent than other countries.

3. Americans are more punitive because they are afraid of crime.

4. Americans are right to think their country is being overwhelmed by crime of every sort.

5. Get-tough-on-crime laws are the laws other countries are now studying with loathing.

6. Mandatory sentencing laws require courts to impose maximum sen­tences on offenders for particular crimes.

7. Three-strike laws impose a mandatory life sentence on anybody convicted of a third felony.

Task 6. Ask the questions to which the following statements are the answers:

1. America tops the developed-country crime league only in one category: murder.

2. The rational robber would be well advised to meet flight or refusal.

3. Americans commonly get killed in these circumstances.

4. Indiscriminate policies bludgeon crime as a whole but fail to tackle the problem of violence.

5. These impose a mandatory life sentence on anybody convicted of a third felony.

6. A man who stole a pizza as his third felony got life.

7. Americans are afraid of crime.

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

to top the developed-country crime league, to fail to co-operate, to meet flight, sequence of thought, to set apart from, to throw one’s weight behind, to bludgeon crime, get-tough-on-crime laws, mandatory sentencing, three-strike laws, 20-odd, unique, to condemn, to convict

.

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

1. The rational robber would be well advised to meet flight or refusal by avoiding conflict and seeking another vic­tim. By eliding vio­lence and crime, Americans fail to identify the problem that sets them apart from the rest of the rich world.

2. 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. The highway patrol was wrong to punish the trooper for exercising his First Amendment right to speak out on a matter of public concern.

3. America now imprisons seven times as many people (proportionately) as does the average European country. It can in no way be considered fair to give one side twice as many strikes as the other, be it state or defendant.

4. There is nothing odd or surprising in the observation that America is more vio­lent than other countries. There was something vaguely dirty about the man.

5. 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. What if the case actually does go to trial? But the question is: is this sensible, even if it does work?

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

Text 3

Task 1. Answer the questions:

1. Do criminals always spend most of their sentences in prison?

2. Why are some criminals let out early?

3. Does prison really work?

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)

Now, the fashion is for "truth-in-sentenc­ing". Such laws require the criminal to spend most of his sentence (usually 85%) in prison, rather than making him eligible for parole after, say, four to six years of a ten-year sentence. There is much to be said for a system that does not leave the public feel­ing cheated about what sentences actually amount to. But, by imposing the 85% aver­age on all offenders, "truth in sentencing" makes it impossible to discriminate be­tween people who seem genuinely remorseful and might be let out early and the more dangerous types who should serve the whole of their sentence.

Since the early 1970s, when the first tough-sentencing laws were introduced, the prison population has risen from 200,000 to 1.1m. If that increase were made up mostly of the violent people that have engendered America's crime panic, that could be counted as a blow against violent crime. But it is not: the biggest increase is in non-violent drug offenders.

Between 1980 and now, the proportion of those sentenced to prison for non-vio­lent property crimes has remained about the same (two-fifths). The number of those sentenced for drugs has soared (from one-tenth to over one-third).

And so what, you might ask? Non-vio­lent crime still matters. Even if America's crime panic is related to violence, it is right and proper that the system should be seek­ing to minimize all crime. The prison popu­lation is going up. The crime figures are go­ing down. Let 'em rot. As the right says: "Prison works."

Or does it? That depends on what you mean by "works". To many people, prison can strongly influence the trend in the crime rate: putting a lot of people in prison, they believe, can achieve a long-term reversal of rising crime. This must be doubtful. Yes, crime is falling now. But it also fell in the early 1980s, rose in the late 1980s and fell again in the early 1990s. The prison population rose through the whole period.

If there is any single explanation for these changes, it would seem to lie in demo­graphics. Young men commit by far and away the largest number of crimes so when there are more of them around, proportionately, the crime rate goes up. .

But demographics cannot be the only explanation. If it were, crime would have fallen in the second half of the 1980s, when there were fewer teenagers. In fact, it rose.

Why? The answer is probably drugs. What seems to have happened is that the appearance of crack in late 1985 shook up the drugs-distribution business. The num­ber of dealers increased, kids with no capi­tal got into the business and gangs com­peted murderously for market share.

This theory would account for the de­cline in homicides in the 1990s. Crack con­sumption seems to be falling — possibly just because drugs go in and out of fashion, pos­sibly because teenagers have seen how bad the stuff is. And the market has matured as well as declined. Policemen and research­ers say territories have been carved out, boundaries set. With competition less rife, murders have declined.

The significance of all this is that it loosens the connection between the rise in the prison population and the fall in the crime rate. Crime might have fallen anyway. A combination of demographic and social explanations, rather than changes in the prison population, seems to account for much of the changing pattern of crime.