Prevention is better than cure

1.

2.

Prevention is better than cure
• Match the definitions A – K
to the crimes bellow.
• A forcing a person to give
you money, usually by
threatening to expose a
secret
• B taking somebody away
and demand money for
their return
C taking control of a plane,
usually for political reasons
D taking things in or out of
a country illegally
E dealing with drugs-buying
and selling them
F damaging public property
for no reason
G paying money to sb (e.g.
an official) for a favour
H taking sth (e.g. a car)
without the owner’s
permission
I killing a famous or
important person for
money or for political
reasons
J killing a person illegally
and intentionally
K using violent action for
political purposes
Crime
Criminal
Assassination
assassin
Blackmail
Specific Verb
blackmail
Robbery
drug dealing
hijacker
Kidnapping
kidnapper
murderer
muggling
hijack
Murder
muggler
terrorist
Theft
steal
vandal
vandalize
Definition

3.

Read the sentences and define the crime.
1. The boy would be harmed unless his parents paid the money.
2. She murdered him for his money.
3. People broke into our house and stole our video camera.
4. He threatened to tell the newspapers unless he got three thousand
pounds.
5. The pilot was forced to take the plane to Tashkent

4.

Answers
1. kidnapping;
2. murder;
3. burglary;
4. blackmail;
5. hijacking

5.

Think
A local policician is found guilty in court of taking a bribe and giving a building contract to
his brother-in-law. What does the politician deserve?
a) He should be made to resign from his party.
b) He should go to prison for ___ (how long?)
c) He should be fined ___ (How much?)
d) other
2 A business executive is stopped for breaking the speed limit and breathalysed by the
police. The executive has more than three times the legal level of alcohol in her blood.
What ponishment does she deserve?
a) She should be fined ___ (how much?) and lose her licence for a year
b) She should go to prison for ___ (how long?)
c) She should lose her licence for life.
d) (Other?)

6.

Think
3. Football hooligans arrive in a town to support their team who are pixying in a cup match. They get drunk, break shop windows, attack
football fans from the local team and terrorize the town. 150 are arrested. What punishment do they deserve?
a) They should be fined ___(How much?)
b) They should go to prison for ___ (How long?)
c) They should be banned for lie from all footbal matches
d) (Other?)
4. A grous of armed poltical activists (From a country which has an extreme military dictatorship) hijack a plane full of tourists and in return for
their release demand political asylum in Europe. They are arrested by soldiers at Heathrow Airport in London. what punishment do they
deserve?
a) They should be sent back to their country.
b) They should be sent to prison for ____ (How long?)
c) They should be given political asylum.
d) (Other?)
5. A fifteen-year-old girl on a school trip abroad is arrested outside a department store. She has five CDs in her bag which have not been paid
for. She is taken to court and is charged with shoplifting. What should happen?
a) She should be sent home without punishment
b) She should be made to stay in the country and do community service
c) Her parents should be made to pay a fine. (How much?)
d) (other?)

7.

Speaking

8.

CRIME AND PUNISHMENT
Focus The Story of Bonnie and Clyde The famous 1967 film told a story that was romantic, funny and violent. The truth was much less
romantic and not very funny at all.
For Clyde Barrow and Bonnie Parker crime was an escape from poverty. They also loved the excitement and the publicity. But as they
carried out their small-time robberies of smalltown banks and cafes through the dark days of the Depression, they killed again and again. The end came on 23rd May,
1934. They died on the road with 187 bullets in their bodies.
Crime: its Causes
Many people have tried to find out why a person becomes a criminal. For example, one nineteenthcentury theory said that criminals are born, not made, and that they have similar features such as large ears and a lot of hair on their
bodies!
Modern theory, however, suggests that the environment helps to create the criminal.
The conditions in city slums explain the high level of crime there. Poverty often creates an unhappy family life for the young and a dee
p wish to escape to something more pleasant.
This often leads straight to drugs and theft. For example, the areas of any city in the USA with the poorest health and education servic
es, the highest unemployment and poverty are also the areas with the highest crime figures and the highest numbers of police arrests
.
The same slums were full of European immigrants and they are still the centres of crime.
But poverty is not the only cause of crime, as an experiment in California has shown, Some years ago a group of students, who all had
"clean" driving licences, were asked to continue driving to and from college in the usual way, except for one thing: they were asked to
put stickers on their cars which said 'Black Panther Party'
(This is a militant black group which was fighting hard for black power) Just 17 days later the police had stopped the students a total o
f 30 times and two people had lost their licences. Obviously, the police did not invent the students'
'crimes': there had been small mistakes the kind that most people who drive often make. So why had the police suddenly started to stop them all the time? It seems that poli
cemen, who are only human, expect some types of people to break the law people who support the Black Panthers, for example. They are immediately more suspicious of them.

9.

Listen to somebody giving an eye-witness
account. What is he talking about?
• A car accident
• A house break-in
• A bank robbery

10.

Conclusion