[Music] hello English Learners welcome back to English pod my name is Marco and my name is Katherine and today we're talking about something very serious very serious today we're talking about capital punishment so if you've never heard that phrase before you might have heard another name for this topic is called the death penalty right so if you commit a crime basically the judge says that you will have to be put to death for that crime all right so many countries no longer have this this law um the United States you can see it in some
places some states but not in others so what we're talking about today is the debate between to have the death penalty and to not have it all right so we're going to actually have a little debate in the end of if if uh we agree that we should have the death penalty or not uh but before that why don't we listen to this dialogue for the first [Music] time that's all for today's class we will continue our lecture and crime and punishment tomorrow do you think we should be tougher on crime well it depends on
what you mean for example we could bring back the death penalty for murder give longer prison sentences for lesser offenses and lock up juvenile offenders those sound like really Draconian measures firstly what do you do about miscarriages of Justice if you've already put innocent people to death you'd only use capital punishment if you were absolutely sure that you convicted the right person but there have been many cases of wrongful conviction where people have been imprisoned for many years the authorities were sure at the time but later it was shown that the evidence was unreliable in
some cases it had been fabricated by the police well no system of justice can be perfect but surely there's a good case for longer prison sentences to deter serious crime I doubt whether they could act as an effective deterrent while the detection rate is so low the best way to crime is to convince people who commit it that they're going to be caught it doesn't make sense to divert all your resources into the prison system but if you detect more crimes you'll still need prisons in my Reckoning if we could lock up more juvenile criminals
they'd learn that they can't get away with it soft sentences will merely encourage them to do it again yes but remember that prisons are often schools for criminals to remove crime from society you really have to tackle its causes well if I were president I would impose tougher laws and Punishment I would have a peaceful Society based on fear of punishment not consciousness of doing the right thing you sound like a dictator well if it works why not all right so Marco there's a lot of really great legal terms here legal and crime terms and
so let's look at a few of these in today's language takeaway language takeaway all right so let's take a look at the first one uh the they mentioned juvenile offenders all right so let's look at these two words because um well offender can be pretty General it's someone who commits a crime MH so an offender but we're talking about a special kind of offender here we're talking about juvenile offenders so they're young offenders right and in America legally you're a juvenile offender if you're under the age of 18 okay so if you commit a crime
while you are a juvenile you get judged differently right you don't get the same treatment as an adult right the new usually the punishments are not as harsh because people like to think that younger people younger children or teenagers they don't really understand the law they don't really understand crime or good and bad so right it should be easier on them mhm all right very good so we have juvenile offenders and we also have a wrongful conviction all right this is an ut oh moment for a for a judge because a wrongful conviction well conviction
first of all is a decision so this is a Court's decision on um whether or not a person is guilty so so you convicted the person right Marco was convicted guilty of stealing my computer I was too that happened okay right but uh it's a wrongful conviction if Marco didn't really steal the computer but we decided that he did okay so it was it was a wrong decision right it was a bad decision in the sense that it's actually not what happened in reality mhm a wrongful conviction very good and actually related to a wrongful
conviction many times it happens because evidence is fabricated by the police all right so this is a big no no this is something that uh really shouldn't happen and it's against the law in many countries so fabrication or to fabricate is to fake to make something up mhm and so evidence that's fabricated is is evidence that the police or other people create to try and make someone look guilty but it's not actually evidence it's not really uh true it's not true right and now moving on um they were talking about a deterrent for Crime okay
so to deter is a verb to deter means to try and get someone to not do something all right so I'm going to try and deter my staff from taking early lunch breaks so I'm going to punish someone as a deterrent as a deterrent okay so you have the verb deter and you have the noun a deterrent right mhm yeah and so of often times very strict laws are meant to be deterrence they're meant to keep people from doing bad things from breaking the law all right so for example capital punishment is one of those
deterrence if you kill somebody then if you get caught you are also going to be killed so that means I'm never going to kill anyone cuz I don't want the law to to decide that I'm going to get killed exactly and our last word for today they were talking about imposing tougher laws I would impose tougher laws okay so to impose is a verb that means to put in place or to set up or enact and so but by force right you don't really you don't really agree to do it like the dictator imposes his
will all right so he makes everyone do what he wants but we can impose measures that do something it's yeah it's kind of like forcibly making people follow some kind of rule or or follow a person now sometimes you would see that you have a company or you have people at your house and they're like well you know stay over for dinner and and they're like oh wouldn't want to impose all right so I wouldn't want to bother you or I wouldn't want to create more work for you because you know when you're making food
you have all these people they don't want to impose on you all right so that's another way of using this impose on somebody all right so uh after all of these words that we've taken a look at uh why don't we start now with fluency Builder fluency Builder Okay so as you know fluency Builder is a place where we get to talk about some phrases and words that allow you to uh be more fluent in English so these are sometimes idioms or sometimes phrases words that go together commonly and the first one is no exception
it's a miscarriage so miscarriage of Justice all right a miscarriage of Justice now we have different uh words here the first one miscarriage it's usually related to a medical term right it's a pregnancy well it's a pregnancy that has a sad result it's a pregnancy where the Woman's baby dies or the woman loses the baby MH and a miscarriage of justice is a metaphor it's a way to say that um Justice was not carried out it means that um for example with those wrongful convictions um the the law failed to accomplish its objective yeah to
accomplish its objective and to be fair okay so a miscarriage of Justice interesting and moving on to our next phrase they were talking and discussing this whole uh death penalty situation and she mentioned in my Reckoning all right so this is a great way to share your opinion or your idea with someone uh you're saying pretty much in my opinion in my according to me or you know the way I'm thinking is this so I can also say I reckon right exactly I I reckon it's going to rain later I think it's going to rain
so in my Reckoning in my opinion all right I reckon um and to finish off fluency Builder they said that the person or the criminal couldn't get away with it all right so this is another one of those phrases that each word maybe means something different you can get somewhere um but put together to get away with something means to do something bad or illegal or uh that's not okay without getting caught or being punished or being punished so you can say get away with murder he got away with murder he you know he did
something that was really really bad but no one caught him and also it means the criminal got away so they couldn't catch him right or I could always say to my brother he would always lie to my parents and get away with it mhm so he never got caught he never got punished okay so he got away with his lie or Got Away got his way right all right so I think this is an interesting phrase why don't we listen to a couple of more examples example one do you think we could get away with
using the cheaper product example two thieves got away with two Picassa which were never found example three he Almost Got Away With Murder unfortunately for him the police discovered his secret so we've taken a look at a lot of great phrases why don't we listen to our dialogue for the last time and then we'll come [Music] back that's all for today's class we will continue our lecture and crime and punishment [Music] tomorrow do you think we should be tougher on crime well it depends on what you mean for example we could bring back the death
penalty for murder give longer prison sentences for lesser offenses and lock up juvenile offenders those sound like really Draconian measures firstly what do you do about miscarriages of Justice if you've already put innocent people to death you'd only use capital punishment if you were absolutely sure that you convicted the right person but there have been many cases of wrongful conviction where people have been imprisoned for many years the authorities were sure at the time but later it was shown that the evidence was unreliable in some cases it had been fabricated by the police well no
system of justice can be perfect but surely there's a good case for longer prison sentences to deter serious crime I doubt whether they could act as an effective deterrent while the detection rate is so low the best way to prevent crime is to convince people who commit it that they're going to be caught it doesn't make sense to divert all your resources into the prison system but if you detect more crimes you'll still need prisons in my Reckoning if we could lock up more juvenile criminals they'd learn that they can't get away with it soft
sentences will merely encourage them to do it again yes but remember that prisons are often schools for criminals to remove crime from society you really have to tackle its causes well if I were president I would impose tougher laws and Punishment I would have a peaceful Society based on fear of punishment not consciousness of doing the right thing you sound like a dictator well if it works why not all right so uh now the big question Catherine do you agree with the death penalty oh this is a big one and I don't think we have
enough time to go into it in much detail here but I definitely think that is Extreme right so we have this phrase Draconian measures they mentioned that in the dialogue yeah so Draconian something that's Draconian is excessive or severe you know and uh I think that there are a lot of reasons not to have the death penalty because the death penalty well you're pretty much saying we as a society think that murder is wrong but we're going to to show you that you've done a wrong thing like a bad thing that's against the law by
killing you mhm all right and so uh I have to disagree with that on a philosophical level mhm what about practical practically speaking I think that there are a lot of problems with the prison system and the legal system in in the United States for example because prisons are really crowded 1% of the American population is in prison and so I think that so long as the prison system still has problems there's a really good argument for having the death penalty but still I think that it's excessive and it's unnecessary and that there are other
ways to treat and punish prisoners it is an interesting topic because you have many different angles uh that are in favor or or against uh the death penalty for example you have religious views where you say that you should not take a life of another person no matter what or you have other views that say that the death penalty is simply wrong and that you can't write a wrong with another wrong right exactly so it it kind of doesn't make sense but at the same time you do like you say the prisons uh are full
of people and it costs around uh I think it's $112,000 a year per person to keep them in prison so what do you do with all of these people that have life sentences that are going to spend the rest of their lives in jail so it is interesting and many countries are very very strict with their legal system u in comparison with the United States right definitely but there is a statistic that's pretty stunning that I think among the top 20 developed nations in the world I think only the United States is the one with
the death penalty exactly and uh actually the ratio of the of people compared to the population that are in jail is much higher in the United States than in other countries that's true so it is a very um questionable topic but uh we want to know what you think do you think that the death penalty is is a justifiable way to to do justice or do you think maybe it's just wrong and we shouldn't have it anymore yeah we're hoping that uh that this will get the conversation going on our website uh if you have
any opinions please let us know about them english.com is the website and of course you can always email us or send us a PM if you're a little bit shy all right so we'll see you guys there bye everyone bye [Music] the English pod audio review listen to the meaning then say the vocabulary word the punishment of death death penalty the act of changing the direction or use of something Diversion the amount of time to keep keep criminals in jail prison sentence expecting or requiring people to obey rules or laws authoritarian underage criminals juvenile offender
an issue that causes disagreement between people and causes them to separate into different groups divisive topic very strict and severe Draconian a person who continues to commit crimes even after being caught and punished recidivist an unjust legal decision miscarriage of Justice to teach a criminal in prison to live a normal and productive life rehabilitate punishment of death capital punishment to make something up to trick people fabricate something that prevents people from from doing something deterrent to move resources from one thing to another divert someone who rules with absolute power dictator let's try that faster to
make something up to trick people fabricate very strict and severe Draconian an unjust legal decision miscarriage of Justice underage criminals juvenile offender the punishment of death death penalty the amount of time to keep criminals in jail prison sentence someone who rules with absolute power dictator an issue that causes disagreement between people and causes them to separate into different groups divisive topic expecting or requiring people to obey rules or laws authoritarian punishment of death capital punishment the act of changing the direction or use of something diversion to teach a criminal in prison to live a normal
and productive life rehabilitate something that prevents people from doing something deterrent to move resources from one thing to another divert a person who continues to commit crimes even after being caught and punished recidivist now say the word and hear it in a sentence death penalty Many religious groups object to the death penalty death penalty the death penalty is one of the most divisive topics in America death penalty statistics about the effectiveness of the death penalty in crime deterrence are often conflicting Draconian some small American towns are enacting Draconian laws against dancing draconian the word Draconian
comes from an ancient Greek lawyer under whom small offenses had heavy punishments Draconian in places with Draconian laws there may be Law and Order but there is no personal freedom fabricate the boy fabricated the entire story there was no wolf at all fabricate the factory can fabricate almost any textile fabricate new studies have found that even DNA evidence can be easily fabricated deterrent bike locks are good theft deterrents deterrent many Studies have proven that long jail sentences are not an effective crime deterrent deterrent when traveling in these mountains we recommend carrying a long stick to
deter Mountain line attacks divert the government will divert future Revenue into paying off the national debt divert beaver dams can divert an entire River divert one Thief diverted the victim's attention while the other Thief stole his wallet [Music]
