9. Crime, drugs, criminality - P

Crime and punishment:

1.) Minor crimes, serious crime – differences and types

2.) Investigation, trial 3.) Situation at court – jury, judge,

4.) Type of punishment – death penalty, life sentence, probation, bail

5.) My oppinion on Death penalty

6.) Me and crime, my experiences with crime

Crime is an action, which is against the law.

We have many types of crime.

Crimes and their punishments are divided according to their importance.

We have minor crimes and serious crime.

A minor crime is a criminal offense that is less serious than a felony. For example: traffic offences, breach of municipal regulations, littering, public nuisance among others.

When someone commits a serious crime like murder, rape, burglary, arson, the police start investigating it. They search for clues like fingerprints, blood stains, hairs, … and witnesses. They are questioning suspects and when they have enough evidence, they arrest him. Then he goes to the court and stand trial. The trial takes place in a courtroom and a person who is on trial is called defendant. The lawyers are known as the defence. The defence calls witnesses to give evidence. The prosecution tries to prove that the defendant is guilty. They call witnesses who give evidence against him. The jury listens to all the evidence and decides whether the defendant is guilty or not guilty. They then give their verdict. If the defendant is found guilty the judge passes sentence. Sentence is official punishment, especially a period in prison.

The highest punishment is death penalty, which is not allowed in Czech Republic. Then we have, life sentence, probation, which means, that the person doesn´t go to the jail, but he can´t do something even little against the law.

2)

The system includes three types of crime:

minor crimes –for example: making noise (its anti-social behaviour), speeding, vandalism. It isn’t so bed and dangerous.

Crimes against property- for example: forgery (is the process of making, adapting, or imitating objects, statistics, or documents its illegal), burglary (is illegal entry into a building), robbery (is the crime of taking or attempting to take something of value by force or threat of force or by putting the victim in fear) or shoplifting.

Violent crimes rape (sexual attack), kidnapping (is the taking away or transportation of a person against that person's will, usually to hold the person in false imprisonment, a confinement without legal authority), mugging (a type of street robbery).

We have different laws and punishment in each country

Police start to investigate the crime.

Firstly, someone must report crime. Police should take a photo, collect fingerprints, voices, biology materials on the crime scene. They try to find some witnesses (it’s the person who saw the crime), question him or her and ultimately, they find suspect and question her or him. They arrest suspect and we have a trial. There is the suspect with lawyer/defender, judge, witnesses and in the USA, we have also jury. In the USA is jury important. They decide if suspect is guilty or innocent. In the Czech Republic the most important person is judge. If suspect is guilty we have a lot of punishment which we can use. It depends on case and the severity of the crime. For example, for minor crimes we have: community work service, fine, probation or prison, life sentence or you must pay reparation for victim. Life sentence is the worst punishment in the Czech Republic because capital punishment was abolished in 1989. People have different opinions on the capital punishment. I think that in some case it could be good punishment in some wrong case for example murder its good idea. Because in my opinion is death the worst punishment in the world. And some murderers deserve it. But problem is when the suspect isn’t guilty. So, judge or jury must be carefully. I´m for worse conditions in prison. Because they have bed, meal, television, they needn’t work, and it isn’t fair. We can reduce crime but it’s difficult. We can give people more work, parents should educate children in the right way, you shouldn’t give your private information to foreign people.