UNIT 8

Crime and trial lead-in

• What kinds of crime (major or minor) can cause problems in everyday life?

• What measures should be taken to protect your property from being stolen?

• Match the criminal in List 1 with the description of the offence in List 2.

List 1 a shoplifter an arsonist a burglar a murderer a pickpocket a kidnapper a smuggler a mugger a forger a vandal an offender a terrorist

List 2 sets fire to buildings attacks someone in a public place to get money kills takes things from people’s bags and pockets steals from a shop seizes another person and takes them away destroys property tries to take things illegally into another country steals things from other people’s houses copies something to trick other people is anyone who breaks the law uses violence for political reasons

• Choose the correct word for each gap.

accused	crime	arrested	found	custody	evidence	court
committed	plead	prison	defence	verdict	charged	witnesses
acquit	sentence	convict	fine	bail

If the police think that someone has ………… (1) a crime, then that person is ………….. (2) and taken to a police station. Within forty-eight hours he or she must be ………… (3) with an offence, or released. If a charge has been made, the accused is usually released on …………. (4) until he or she stands trial at a later date. For very serious offences, such as murder, the ………… (5) is remanded in ………… (6), which means being kept in prison while awaiting trial. When someone appears in ………… (7) before a judge and jury they have the right to be represented by a lawyer who speaks for the …………. (8). When the trial begins, the accused has to ………….. (9), that is to say whether he or she is guilty or not guilty. The defence and the prosecution then call ………… (10) to give evidence. After all the ………….. (11) has been heard, the jury retires to consider the …………… (12). They can ………….. (13), which means they consider the accused innocent, or they can …………… (14). If the accused has been …………… (15) guilty, then the judge has to pass ……………. (16). He may impose a ……………. (17) or send the offender to ……………. (18). It depends on the nature of the …………… (19).

• Complete the sentences with the correct form of rob or steal.

rob ( v.) – to take money or property from a person or place, the thing that is robbed stays where it is (Someone robbed the bank last night.)

steal ( v. ) – to take away something that belongs to someone else without his or her permission (He was caught trying to steal some cigarettes.)

1. Two banks have been …………. in Cambridge this week.

1. He was found guilty of committing murder during a …………. .

2. Although the house was broken into, nothing was ………….. .

3. Last week, Mrs Roberts …………. from supermarkets on three occasions.

4. ‘I’ve been ………….!’ shouted Lady Brookes when she realised her necklace was missing.

5. Two .……….. were arrested by the police but the third escaped.

6. By the time he was fifteen, Tom was addicted to ………….. fast cars.

7. Don’t leave your briefcase inside your car – it might get …………. .

8. Robin Hood ………… the rich to pay the poor.

9. Marjorie was ashamed of …………. Money from her mother’s purse.

10. Captain Blood ………… the crown jewels from the Tower of London in 1671.

11. Since that time the Tower of London has never been …………. .

• Rewrite the sentences using the word fault.

fault ( n.) – responsibility for a mistake (It is not my fault that we missed the train.)

1. Who is to blame for breaking the window?

2. Richard was to blame for the accident.

3. They blamed the pilot for the crash.

4. The victim of this crime is partly to blame.

5. Don’t blame me!

6. I will not accept any blame whatsoever.

• Rewrite the sentences using the verb to blame in the correct form.

blame ( v. ) – to say or think that someone is responsible for something bad (She blamed herself for Keith’s problems. John is to blame for not finishing the work in time.)

1. The accident was the other driver’s fault.

2. People said that the heavy losses were the manager’s fault.

3. The cyclist agreed that he was partly at fault.

4. It’s not Peter’s fault!

5. It’s not your fault at all.

• Paraphrase the following sentences using different vocabulary patterns:

Model: They blamed the failure of the talks on the Russians.

They blamed the Russians for the failure of the talks.

They blamed the rise in oil prices for the big increase in inflation.

1. If he fails the exam he’s only got himself to blame.

2. The children were not to blame for the accident.

3. The judge put the blame for the accident on the driver of the car.

4. It’s not our fault we’re late. – Whose fault is it, then?

5. In many cases of bad behaviour in children, it is the parents who are really at fault.

6. You always blame someone else when things go wrong.

7. His wife left him but he only has himself to blame – he was a terrible husband.

8. You mustn’t blame yourself.

9. Children sometimes feel that they had a part in the break-up of their parents’ and blame themselves.

• Translate into English:

1. Это твоя вина, что собака убежала. Ты не закрыл ворота.

2. Почему я всегда виню себя в том, что не является моей виной.

3. Она провалила тест, но это была ее вина – она не делала никакой работы.

4. Не вини себя за это происшествие. Это была вина Джима, что тормоза не работали.

5. Он сам виноват во всей этой ситуации.

6. Не кричи на меня. Я не виноват, что у тебя неприятности.

7. Всякий раз, когда дети плохо себя ведут, люди обвиняюот учителей.

8. Кто из водителей был виноват в аварии?

9. Вы думаете правительство виновато в росте инфляции?

10. Я возлагаю вину за рост преступности на телевидение, которое демонстрирует слишком много сцен насилия.

W hy do some clothes or shoes become extremely fashionable?

What clothes or shoes are very fashionable at the moment?

Dressing to Kill Leads to Murder in Chicago

Being ‘dressed to kill’ is rapidly acquiring a macabre connotation in the streets of downtown Chicago, Detroit and Los Angeles. With disturbing frequency, young people, usually teenagers, are being murdered for the shirt or jacket on their back or the shoes on their feet. The phenomenon has been called ‘clothing-related violence’, or ‘killing to be cool’ and the fatal fashion appears to be catching on. The most recent recorded incident occurred in Chicago and involved a 19-year-old man, Calvin Walsh. Mr Walsh was walking on the city’s West Side on Saturday wearing a brightly-coloured Cincinnati Bengals bomber jacket. Such jackets, and other featuring football team logos like those of the Washington Redskins and Chicago Bears, costing up to $200 (£130), are all the rage. And that’s the problem. Mr Walsh’s ‘offence’ was not that he was wearing the wrong team colours. It was merely that the stranger who accosted him wanted his jacket. When Mr Walsh tried to make a run for it he was shot in the back and killed.

The trend was first spotted last autumn after the murder of a 24-year-old Chicago man by four youths who liked his jacket. In November and December, Hawks jackets were the cause of two more killings. In Detroit last November, a school pupil was found dead and shoeless: his attacker had taken his $70 Nike sneakers. Police in Los Angeles and New York reported similar robberies. One mother whose son survived the theft of the $175 gym shoes he was wearing told a Chicago newspaper: ‘These children are out here stealing from one another to be cool. It’s a sad situation. Their parents can’t afford to buy the stuff, so they do whatever they can to get it.’ A Los Angeles policeman put it another way, ‘The individual wants to hang on to the jacket because he paid so much for it, so they just blow him away.’ In some cases, the murders do appear to have been related to gang or team loyalties. Wearing the ‘wrong’ colour shoes, or even shoelaces, is enough to get you killed in some Los Angeles neighbourhoods. But the clothes-related violence phenomenon also reflects the cheapness of human life in some of America’s inner city ghettos, the ready availability of guns to young people, and the poverty in which many of them live.

Ironically, perhaps, given the fashionable trend in the USA and Britain away from school uniform, the Detroit Board of Education has approved a schools dress code to be implemented this autumn in an attempt to control the problem of clothes-related violence.

• Find a word or phrase in the text that in context has a similar meaning to:

1. a frightening meaning

2. deadly

3. becoming popular

4. symbols

5. very fashionable

6. went up to him threateningly

7. noticed

8. expressed it differently

9. keep

10. shoot him

11. connected with

12. put into practice

• Answer the following questions.

1. What does the phrase ‘dressed to kill’ mean in this context? What does it normally mean?

2. What is the reason for the murders?

3. What happened to Mr Walsh?

4. When did murders of this kind begin?

5. What is meant by the ‘wrong’ colour shoes?

6. What reasons are given for these crimes?

7. What steps are being taken to control this problem?

8. Do you agree with the statement that the ready availability of guns bring about an increase in the crime rate?

9. What should be done in order to reduce the crime rate among the children?

• Find English equivalents to the following words and word combinations.

1. приобретать зловещий смысл

2. пугающе / настораживающе часто

3. смертельная мода, по-видимому, приживается

4. жертвой инцидента стал

5. куртки, изображающие эмблемы футбольных команд

6. эти куртки - последний крик моды

7. пристал к нему

8. убежать

9. впервые тенденция была выявлена

10. оказался жертвой кражи

11. выразил это по-другому

12. не хочет отпускать / отдавать

13. убийства, действительно, были связаны с

14. командные пристрастия

15. свободный доступ к оружию

• Summarize the text.

• Retell the text.

W hy do young people begin to commit crimes?

What is the best way to deal with young people who commit crimes?

How can criminals be persuaded to give up crime?

Does the accused always get a fair sentence? What punishment do you consider to be relevant for this or that crime or offence?

LESSONS ON A LIFE OF CRIME

It is Monday morning at the Cantell School in Southampton and a slight, attractive man of 45, wearing plain grey clothes, introduces himself to a group of 40 children. ‘My name is John. How old are you … 13 or 14? Well, I’ve spent as many years as you’ve been alive in prison. At the moment, I am serving a seven-year sentence. This is my parole licence.’ He waves a paper in front of them, then picks up three closely-typed pages and continues: ‘This is my criminal record. Detention centre, Borstal, prison. That’s a wasted life.’ John Bower’s visit is part of the children’s personal development course, a chance to explore ideas about responsibility that they have already discussed with their teacher, John Jones. For Mr Bowers, it is a chance to redeem himself after 30 years of crime. On his release last February, he contacted New Bridge, a voluntary organization that helps ex-prisoners find employment. He began giving talks about prison life to schools where the children might be at risk of getting into trouble. ‘Those of us who are concerned with prisoners believe that the process of caring has to continue when they leave prison,’ says Eric McGraw, the director of New Bridge. ‘The main problem is that people are let out of prison with £20 in their pocket, no job and nowhere to go, and we expect them not to commit crimes again.’

At Cantell, a large secondary school, Mr Bowers writes ‘prison’ and ‘prisoner’ on the board and asks the children to suggest what the words mean. Hands go up and ‘bars’, ‘bad news’, ‘lonely’, ‘isolation’, ‘terrible food’, ‘shame’, and ‘violence’ are written down. ‘Boredom’ says one girl. ‘That’s exactly right,’ says Mr Bowers. ‘What do you think of me for wasting my life in a place like that? Honestly?’ There is an awkward pause, then a boy at the back of the class whispers ‘thick!’ and everybody laughs. Later some of the questions reveal traces of anger, perhaps because the children have been victims of crime. ‘Did you ever burgle a house at Christmas?’ one girl demands. ‘No,’ Mr Bowers says. ‘In some crazy moral way, I laid low at Christmas – as if that justified doing it at other times of the year.’ Another child asks whether he had any regrets. ‘You try and blot out what you are doing to people,’ he explains. ‘If I had robbed your house, it wouldn’t have been anything personal. If I had had any conscience, I wouldn’t have lasted five minutes.’

Mr Bowers has written on the board all the words the children came up with. ‘That’s right,’ he says. ‘All these words apply to me.’ This is the heart of his message. ‘I’m here to say that all these words will apply to you too, if you embark on a life of crime, or waste your life through drugs, alcohol or, as I did, through imagining the world owes you a living.’ He asks them to think about how their parents would feel if any of them were arrested for shoplifting or stealing a car radio. There is some uncomfortable shuffling as they volunteer ‘ashamed’ and ‘upset’. He asks why they think people commit crime. Short of money, revenge on a society that does nothing for you, problems at home, no friends or the wrong sort of friends, they reply. But he accepts no excuses. ‘Most prisoners are very selfish people,’ he says. ‘They would rather rob than get a job. No friends, jealousy and idleness – this covers 99 per cent of the prison population.’

Mr Jones suggests that the children should tell Mr Bowers what they think of him now they’ve heard what he has to say. Replies come thick and fast: friendly, honest, willing, a good citizen, trustworthy, ‘nearly a normal person’. In 40 minutes Mr Bowers has undergone a journey that is vital to his self-respect, from a criminal whom one boy said he wouldn’t like to meet on a dark night, to being an ex-offender – ‘nearly a normal person’. It is, after all, a course in personal development.

• Find a word or phrase in the text that in context has a similar meaning to:

1. time in prison

2. permission to leave prison

3. list of criminal convictions

4. regain his self-respect

5. stupid

6. slight indications

7. sense of right and wrong

8. begin

9. moving the feet

• Are the following statements true or false?

1. John Bowers has been a criminal for 14 years.

2. He has finished his prison sentence.

3. At first the children are hostile to Mr Bowers.

4. The children feel embarrassed.

5. Mr Bowers writes up all the words the children use to describe him.

6. Mr Bowers is more critical of criminals than the children are.

7. Mr Bowers makes a good impression on the children.

• Find English equivalents to the following words and word combinations.

1. разрешение на досрочное освобождение

2. уголовное прошлое / судимости

3. искупать (вину) / исправлять (ошибки)

4. забыть что-то неприятное

5. предлагать (слова)

6. все слова относятся ко мне

7. вступить на путь преступления

8. месть обществу

9. он не принял никаких оправданий

10. человек, которому можно доверять

• Answer the following questions.

1. What have you learnt about John Bowers?

2. What is the purpose of the children’s development course?

3. What is the aim of Mr. Bowers in taking part in this course?

4. What are voluntary organizations like New Bridge designed for?

5. What problems do ex-prisoners come up against?

6. What do the children associate prison with?

7. What do some of the children’s questions reveal? Why?

8. What does Mr. Bowers say trying to justify himself?

9. What does Mr. Bowers warn the children against?

10. Why do people embark on a life of crime according to the text? Are there any other reasons for it?

11. What do the children think of Mr. Bowers at the end of the meeting?

12. Why does he make a good impression on them?

13. What effect does his visit have on both him and the children?

• Summarize the text.

• Retell the text.