Урок " Causes of Crimes. What Makes People Commit Crimes?"

          Learning outcomes                                              

                       Resources and exercises

1. Read the definition of the notion “crime”. Do you agree with it? Do you think it’s important to know more about reasons of crimes? Why?

1.1. Judging from your own experience, name 10 crimes which happen most frequently.

1.2. Arrange the list of the crimes from the most to the least serious ones.

2. Chose one of four suggested reasons which make people commit crimes.

3. Relate the crimes from your lists with the reasons given in quotations and write them into the box of evidence.

4. Define what made the man in the cartoon commit a crime and write the reason(s) into the box of evidence.

 5. Compare causes of crimes in your box of evidence with those in the text.

6. Justify that some of the reasons are not true to fact ( if there are such ones).

6.1. Replace the expressions in the bold from the text with the ones from your active vocabulary or explain their meaning in your own words.

7. Summing up. 

Share your opinion what makes people commit crimes.

8. Home assignment:

Think of five things which may help to curb the crime rate. Get ready to prove your point of view.

1. In ordinary language, a crime is an unlawful act punishable by a state or other authority. ... One proposed definition is that a crime or offence (or criminal offence) is an act harmful not only to some individual but also to a community, society or the state ("a public wrong").

 Crime - Wikipedia

1.1 Brainstorming

1.2. Group work

2. There are four signs in different parts of the class room and students move to this or that sign.

а) Poverty and not a sin is a parent of modern crime.

                                                         O. Wilde.

b) All criminals are perverse people.

                                                         From the book.

c) When crime is on the rise then society is badly governed.

                                                          Napoleon.

d) The greatest crimes are caused by excess and not by necessity.

                                                           Aristotle.

3. Group work

4. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oju_R8veOa0

5.     Text  Causes of  Crimes

             No one knows why crime occurs. The oldest theory, based on theology and ethics, is that criminals are perverse persons who deliberately commit crimes or, who do so at the instigation of the devil or other' evil spirits. Although this idea has been discarded by modern criminologists, it persists among uninformed people and provides thе rationale for the harsh punishments still meted out to criminals in many parts of the world.

      Some theorists relate the incidence of crime to the general state of a culture, especially the impact of economic crises, wars, and revolutions and the general sense of insecurity to which these forces give rise. As a society becomes more unsettled and its people more restless and fearful of the future, the crime rate tends to rise. This is particularly true of juvenile crime, as the experience of the United States since World War П has made evident.

             The final major group of theories are psychological and psychiatric. Studies by such 20^th century investigators as the American criminologist Bernard Glueck and the British psychiatrist William Healy have indicated that about one-fourth of a typical convict  population is psychotic, neurotic, or emotionally unstable and another one-fourth is mentally deficient. These emotional and mental conditions do not automatically make people criminals, but do, it is believed, make them more prone to criminality. Recent studies of criminals have thrown further Sight on the kinds of emotional disturbances that may lead to criminal behavior.

6.1.  Group work