Lesson Three
Pre-class Work
Read the text a third time. Learn the new words and expressions listed below.
Glossary
approval
n. official permission
bond
n. a written document in which a government or company promises to pay back money that it has borrowed, often with interest 债券
certainty
n. the state of being certain
commit
v. to do sth. wrong or illegal
contribution
n. sth. you say or do in order to help make sth. successful 贡献
convict
v. to find sb. guilty of a crime, esp. in a court of law
n. a person who has been found guilty of a crime and sent to prison
costly
adj. having a high price; expensive
court
n. a place where legal matters are decided by a judge and jury
current
adj. belonging to the present time
decade
n. a period of 10 years
deter
v. to discourage; to persuade sb. not to do sth., by making him realize it will be difficult or will have unpleasant results
dismiss
v. to ～ a court case: to stop a court case before a result is reached
elite
adj. considered to be the best of their kind 属于精英的，最好的
estimate
n. a calculation of a quantity or number 估计
evidence
n. the information used in a court of law to try to prove sth.
execute
v. to kill sb. as a lawful punishment for a serious crime
feasible
adj. able to be carried out or done
feature
n. a typical part or quality
illustrate
v. to show sth. by giving related examples
imprison
v. to put in prison
inmate
n. one who is kept in a prison
maximum
adj. the largest number or amount
nonetheless
adv. in spite of that; yet; nevertheless
nontraffic
adj. not related to traffic
observation
n. what one has noticed
offender
n. sb. who is guilty of a crime; a criminal
offense
n. an illegal action or a crime
per
prep. for each
personnel
n. all the people employed in a particular organization
precisely
adv. exactly
prior
adj. happening before
property
n. belongings; possessions
prosecute
v. to bring a criminal charge against sb. in a court of law
rate
n. the speed at which sth. happens over a period of time
reality
n. the real situation; the real state of affairs
reject
v. to refuse to accept
Saudi Arabia
沙特阿拉伯
severity
n. the state of being severe
social
adj. relating to society
solution
n. a way of solving a problem or dealing with a difficult situation
statistics
n. facts shown in numbers
teenage
adj. aged between 13 and 19
theft
n. the crime of stealing
tough
adj. determined and strict
victim
n. a person who suffers as a result of other people's criminal actions, etc.
violence
n. the use of force to hurt other people physically
voter
n. a person who has the legal right to vote, esp. in a political election
witness
n. a person who tells in a court of law what he saw or what he knows about a crime
Proper Name
Alcatraz
阿尔卡特拉兹（美国圣弗兰西斯科湾——即旧金山湾——的小岛，1933—1963年为一座联邦监狱所在地。）
Text A
More Crime and Less Punishment
Richard Moran
Read the text once for the main idea. Do not refer to the notes, dictionaries or the glossary yet.
If you are looking for an explanation of why we don't get tough with criminals, you need only look at the numbers. Each year almost a third of the households in America are victims of violence or theft. This amounts to more than 41 million crimes, many more than we are able to punish. There are also too many criminals. The best estimates suggest that 36 million to 40 million people (16 to 18 percent of the U. S. population) have arrest records for nontraffic offenses. We already have 2. 4 million people under some form of correctional supervision, 412, 000 of them locked away in a prison cell. We don't have room for any more!
The painful fact is that the more crime there is the less we are able to punish it. This is why the certainty and severity of punishment must go down when the crime rate goes up. Countries like Saudi Arabia can afford to give out harsh punishments precisely because they have so little crime. But can we afford to cut off the hands of those who committed more than 35 million property crimes each year? Can we send them to prison? Can we execute more than 22,000 murderers?
We need to think about the relationship between punishment and crime in a new way. A decade of careful research has failed to provide clear and convincing evidence that the threat of punishment reduces crime. We think that punishment deters crime, but it just might be the other way around. It just might be that crime deters punishment: that there is so much crime that it simply cannot be punished.
This is the situation we find ourselves in today. Just as the decline in the number of high-school graduates has made it easier to gain admission to the college of one's choice, the gradual increase in the criminal population has made it more difficult to get into prison. While elite colleges and universities still have high standards of admissions, some of the most "exclusive" prisons now require about five prior serious crimes before an inmate is accepted into their correctional program. Our current crop of prisoners is an elite group, on the whole much more serious offenders than those who were once imprisoned in Alcatraz.
These features show that it makes little sense to blame the police, judges or correctional personnel for being soft on criminals. There is not much else they can do. The police can't find most criminals and those they do find are difficult and costly to convict. Those convicted can't all be sent to prison. The society demands that we do everything we can against crime. The practical reality is that there is very little the police, courts or prisons can do about the crime problem. The criminal justice system must then become as powerless as a parent who has charge of hundreds of teenage children and who is nonetheless expected to answer the TV message: "It's 10 o'clock! Do you know where your children are?"
A few statistics from the Justice Department's recent "Report to the Nation on Crime and Justice" illustrate my point. Of every 100 serious crimes committed in America, only 33 are actually reported to the police. Of the 33 reported, about six lead to arrest. Of the six arrested, only three are prosecuted and convicted. The others are rejected or dismissed due to evidence or witness problems or are sent elsewhere for medical treatment instead of punishment. Of the three convicted, only one is sent to prison. The other two are allowed to live in their community under supervision. Of the select few sent to prison, more than half receive a maximum sentence of five years. The average inmate, however, leaves prison in about two years. Most prisoners gain early release not because parole boards are too easy on crime, but because it is much cheaper to supervise a criminal in the community. And, of course, prison officials must make room for the new prisoners sent almost daily from the courts.
We could, of course, get tough with the people we already have in prison and keep them locked up for longer periods of time. Yet when measured against the lower crime rates this would probably produce, longer prison sentences are not worth the cost to state and local governments. Besides, those states that have tried to gain voters' approval for bonds to build new prisons often discover that the public is unwilling to pay for prison construction.
And if it were willing to pay, long prison sentences may not be effective in reducing crime. In 1981, 124,000 convicts were released from prison. If we had kept them in jail for an additional year, how many crimes would have been prevented? While it is not possible to know the true amount of crime committed by people released from prison in any given year, we do know the extent to which those under parole are jailed again for major crime convictions. This number is a surprisingly low 6 percent (after three years it rises to only 11 percent). Even if released prisoners commit an average of two crimes each, this would amount to only 15,000 crimes prevented: a drop in the bucket when measured against the 41 million crimes committed each year.
More time spent in prison is also more expensive. The best estimates are that it costs an average of $13,000 to keep a person in prison for one year. If we had a place to keep the 124,000 released prisoners, it would have cost us $1.6 billion to prevent 15,000 crimes. This works out to more than $100,000 per crime prevented. But there is more. With the average cost of prison construction running around $50,000 per bed, it would cost more than $6 billion to build the necessary cells. The first-year operating cost would be $150,000 per crime prevented, worth it if the victim were you or me, but much too expensive to be feasible as a national policy.
Faced with the reality of the numbers, I will not be so foolish as to suggest a solution to the crime problem. My contribution to the public debate begins and ends with this simple observation: getting tough with criminals is not the answer.
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