The oppression of any people for opinion's sake has rarely had any other effect than to fix those opinions deeper and render them more important.

Ballou

Debate: WHAT CAN REALLY BE DONE TO ELIMINATE CHILD MARRIAGE?

Give your own ideas on the following problems:

(1) What age do you think is the most acceptable for marriage? Why?

(2) What is the perfect age for:

· leaving home?

· starting work?

· maybe, changing work?

· starting physical training and keeping fit?

· beginning drinking alcohol?

· falling in love?

· having children?

· quitting work?

· having grandchildren?

(3) Do you agree that education is the most effective in efforts to eliminate child marriage?

(4) Is there such a phenomenon as «gender gaps in education» in your country?

(5) Give your opinion about discrimination in general and give examples of it from your own life, or somebody you know, or from the books you have read.

 

CONNECTICUT FUNNY LAWS Town records may not be kept where liquor is sold. You can be stopped by the police for biking over 65 miles per hour. It is illegal to dispose of used razor blades. You cannot buy any alcohol after 9p.m. or on Sundays after noon on Sunday. It is illegal to discharge a firearm from a public highway. No one may use a white cane unless they are blind. It is unlawful to walk backwards after sunset. Only white Christmas lights are allowed for display. You may not educate dogs. It is illegal for a man to kiss his wife on Sunday. It is illegal for fire trucks to exceed 25mph, even when going to a fire.

 

CREATIVE WRITING

Write an essay about the facts of abuse, neglect, bad treatment of children in modern society. Make use of the Internet and mass media. Share your ideas with your classmates, organizing a conference and giving your ways of finding the solutions to the problems being discussed.

 

 

Unit 5

POLICE AND THE PUBLIC

Task 1. Study the text below, making sure you fully comprehend it. Where appropriate, consult English-Russian dictionaries and/or other reference & source books on law.

The Police in Britain

The definition of policing

The word «police» means, generally, the arrangements made in all civilised countries to ensure that the inhabitants keep the peace and obey the law. The word also denotes the force of peace officers (or police) employed for this purpose.

In attaining these objects, much depends on the approval and co-operation of the public, and these have always been determined by the degree of esteem and respect in which the police are held. One of the key principles of modern policing in Britain is that the police seek to work with the community and as part of the community.

Origins of policing

The origin of the British police lies in early tribal history and is based on customs for securing order through the medium of appointed representatives. In effect, the people were the police. The Saxons brought this system to England and improved and developed the organisation.

This entailed the division of the people into groups of ten, called «tythings», with a tything-man as representative of each; and into larger groups, each of ten tythings, under a «hundred-man» who was responsible to the Shire-reeve, or Sheriff, of the County.

The tything-man system, after contact with Norman feudalism, changed considerably but was not wholly destroyed. In time the tything-man became the parish constable and the Shire-reeve the Justice of the Peace, to whom the parish constable was responsible. This system, which became widely established in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, comprised, generally, one unarmed able-bodied citizen in each parish, who was appointed or elected annually to serve for a year unpaid, as parish constable. He worked in co-operation with the local Justices in securing observance of laws and maintaining order. In addition, in the towns, responsibility for the maintenance of order was conferred on the guilds and, later, on other specified groups of citizens, and these supplied bodies of paid men, known as «The Watch», for guarding the gates and patrolling the streets at night.

In the eighteenth century came the beginnings of immense social and economic changes and the consequent movement of the population to the towns. The parish constable and «Watch» systems failed completely and the impotence of the law-enforcement machinery was a serious menace. Conditions became intolerable and led to the formation of the «New Police».