Lesson 3 More Crime and Less Punishment

I.Pre-class work II 1. the crime problem; serious; crimes; criminals; one third of; 41 million; 36 to 40 million 2. soft; crimes and criminals 3. evidence; deters; punishment 4. there are too many of them; Saudi Arabia; have their hands cut off; 35 million 5. commit 5 serious crimes; elite universities 6. practical; in prison; longer imprisonment; can bear the cost 7. the court and police; solution to the crime problem; getting tough with criminals is not the answer

*Use of Words and Expressions 1. commit Collocations: commit a mistake; murder; crime; suicide Other uses: 1) Commit a child to the care of a nursery 把孩子交托给托儿所。 2) The jury committed the criminal to five years’ imprisonment 陪审团判处那个罪犯五年徒刑。 3) He refused to commit himself on a controversial subject before making due investigations. 他拒绝在作必要的调查研究之前对争论的问题表态。 Part of Speech: commitment (n.) 4) He committed himself to the cause of education all his life. 他终身献身教育事业。

2. deter: 阻挡；威慑 Nothing can deter one from risking his life once he falls in love with a girl. Part of Speech: determent 制止；威慑 3. offend: offender offence offensive

II. Pre-class work IV 1.According to the most favorable judgment, 36 million to 40 million people, amounting to 16 to 18 percent of the U.S. population, have at some time been arrested for acts of wrongdoing, not including those of breaking traffic rules and regulations. * suggest: to state indirectly 1) His silence suggested disagreement. 2) The figures suggest that the income of the local people is increasing. Cf. He suggested that new rules and regulations be passed to meet the demands of the present situation. 2. under correctional supervision: a euphemism being disciplined, or being made to improve one’s behavior under the control / charge of the community, etc. as a punishment.

4. We think that punishment helps prevent crime, but the opposite might be true: crime prevents punishment. *deter sth.: to discourage, check or prevent sth. through the threat of sth. unpleasant 1) A heavy fine alone won’t deter shoplifting. 2) The university enforces severe punishment to deter cheating in exams. *deter sb. from sth./doing sth. : to make sb. decide not to do sth. or continue doing sth. esp. by making them understand the difficulties and unpleasant results of their actions 1) Threats failed to deter him from continuing his research. 2) The high prices of housing deter people from buying homes. *the other way around / round: the opposite situation 1) To our surprise, the tiger didn’t kill the man. It was the other way round ― the man killed the tiger. 2) He didn’t divorce his wife. It was the other way round.

6. There is a similarity between prisons and universities in their recruiting policy. You’ve got to be outstanding candidates to get into the best colleges and universities. Similarly, certain prisons for dangerous criminals only accept those who have committed five serious crimes before being convicted for the present one. 7. Our present imprisoned criminal population is indeed composed of first-rate criminals. On the whole, they are much more serious law-breakers than those who were put in a prison before. crop: a large number of things or people turning up at the same time/simultaneously a crop of questions; a crop of promising table-tennis players

8. What happens to be other three arrested criminals who are not prosecuted and convicted? Either because there isn’t sufficient evidence or no witnesses can be found, they are not prosecuted and convicted. In such cases, the court either refuses to consider their cases, or stops examining them before a verdict is reached. Or instead of being put into prison, these criminals may be sent elsewhere for medical treatment when they can produce proof for illness of some kind. 9. If criminals were kept longer in prison, crime rates would probably go down. But when we consider the money that state and local governments have to pay for this, longer prison sentences are not worthwhile.

*measure sth. / sb. against sth./sb.: to judge sb. or sth. by comparing them with another person or thing. 1) Our production costs are high, when (they are) measured against the world’s advanced level. 2) The country’s economic growth last year is impressive when measured against those of other Asian countries. 3) Your performance is poor when measured against the success of other salespersons. *worth sth./doing sth. 11. Although we can’t possibly know exactly how many crimes are committed by released prisoners in a specific year, we do know how many of those people under parole are convicted again for serious crimes and put into jail again.

12. …this would add up to a total of only 15,000 crimes. This means that only that number of crimes would be prevented if those prisoners were locked up in prison for an additional year. But each year 41 million crimes occur. Compared with 41 million, 15,000 is a very small number. A drop in the bucket (AmE)/ the ocean (BrE): an amount of sth. that is too small or unimportant to make any real difference What we have raised is just a drop in the bucket. The project will need far more.

13. *work out to: to make a total amount of sth., add up to The total cost of the project worked out to/at 10 million. Paraphrase: This means that it costs more than $100,000 to prevent one crime. 14. $150,000 would be worth it if there were only one person’s life, such as yours or mine, to save, but such a policy would be much too expensive to carry out nationwide. operating cost: money you have to pay to put long prison sentences into practice. too expensive to be feasible: too expensive to be carried out

Dictation 1. convict 2. severity 3. statistics 4. personnel 5. inmate 6. nontraffic 7. offense 8. prosecute 9. theft 10. violence 11. maximum 12. precisely 13. execute 14. illustrate 15. imprison 16. current 17. estimate 18. evidence 19. feasibility 20. feature

Exercises 1. Uses of Words convince & persuade refuse & reject 2. Text B