Hello, English learners.
Welcome back to EnglishPod.
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.
It's called the death penalty.
Right.
So if you commit a crime and 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.
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 we agree that we should have the death penalty or not.
But before that, why don't we listen to this dialogue for the first time?
That's all for today's class.
We will continue our lecture on 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 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 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.
They mentioned juvenile offenders.
All right.
So let's look at these two words because, well, offender can be pretty general.
It's someone who commits a crime.
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.
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 it should be easier on them.
Alright, very good.
So we have juvenile offenders and we also have wrongful conviction.
All right, this is an uh-oh moment for a judge, because a wrongful conviction well conviction first of all is a decision.
So this is a court's decision on whether or not a person is guilty.
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 a computer.
But we decided that he did okay, so you 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.
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 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.
And so evidence that's fabricated 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... It's not true.
It's not true.
Right.
And now moving on, 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.
Yeah, and so oftentimes very strict laws are meant to be deterrents.
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 deterrents.
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 because I don't want the law 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.
But by force, right?
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 kind of like forcibly making people follow some kind of rule 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 they're like, oh, I 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, after all of these words that we've taken a look at, 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 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 words here.
The first one, miscarriage, is usually related to a medical term.
Right, 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.
Mm-hmm.
And a miscarriage of justice is a metaphor.
It's a way to say that justice was not carried out.
It means that, for example, with those wrongful convictions, 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 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.
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 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.
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.
But put together to get away with something means to do something bad or illegal or 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 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.
Or I could always say to my brother, he would always lie to my parents and get away with it.
So he never got caught.
He never got punished.
Okay, so he got away with his lie or got his way.
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?
Thieves got away with two Picassos, which were never found.
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 back.
That's all for today's class.
We will continue our lecture on 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 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 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.
And so we have this phrase draconian measures.
Right.
They mentioned that in the dialogue.
Yeah, so draconian, something that's draconian is excessive or severe, you know?
And 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 show you that you've done a wrong thing like a bad thing, that's against the law, by killing you.
All right.
And so I have to disagree with that on a philosophical level.
But what about practical?
Practically speaking, I think that there are a lot of problems with the prison system and the legal system 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 that are in favor or against 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 right a wrong with another wrong right, exactly.
So 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 twelve thousand dollars 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 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 actually the ratio 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 questionable topic, but we want to know what you think.
Do you think that the death penalty is a justifiable way to do justice?
Or do you think maybe it's just wrong and we shouldn't have it anymore?
Yeah, we're hoping that this will get the conversation going on our website.
If you have any opinions, please let us know about them.
EnglishPod.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.
