PROBLEMS OF JUVENILE DELINQUENCY.

WHAT CAUSES CRIME?

(1) What is crime caused by? When I started to investigate juvenile crime I started from the premise that most children are born thieves. The more I have discussed the problem with those involved: police, teachers, parents, social workers, children and many others — the more have I been satisfied that my premise is correct. But this wide contact has satisfied me about something else. Because they are born thieves, it does not mean that most children are born criminals. That is something they may become. They do so because of behavior and the attitudes of adults, often parents, and very frequently teachers. And that is the tragedy.

(2) We expect criminal parents to tend to bring up criminal children. But, conversely, we expect honest and law abiding parents to bring up honest and law abiding children. But do they? The appalling figures of juvenile delinquency are more than disturbing.

(3) Many parents have told me of their despair in finding that their children steal from mum's purse or handbag or the family moneybox, tell lies on being detected and then do the same again.

(4) Nevertheless, firm action in the home can ensure that this behavior is eradicated and what I regard as the natural propensity of the child to take what he or she wants need never become ingrained as de­liberate criminal behavior.

(5) At the annual conference of the National Association of School­masters and Union of Women Teachers at Harrogate last April, one speaker, Doncaster Headmaster John Atherfold said: ... «Girls are worse than boys. They are subject to little or no control from their parents and grow up in homes where assaults are the order of the day»

(6) But what about crime among pupils in school? The original intention of my survey was to deal with this problem in isolation — but I found such an approach to be impossible. «What goes on in schools is a reflection of what goes on in society», I was told by Mr. R.F. Glover, the Deputy Secretary of the Headmasters' Conference. Only a few months ago, speaking at a dinner of Scottish Association for the Study of Delinquency at Peebles, Sir David McNee, London's Commissioner of Police, declared that a lowering of moral standards, a decline in religious beliefs and a lack of parental and family influence were the main reasons for the increasing crime rate.

(7) The result of my talks with children on juvenile crime in general is the following. There was an overwhelming criticism by the children of the lack of concern and discipline shown by their parents. A very large majority recognized the need for an effective punishment, called for the return of corporal punishment and asked for firmer discipline in schools. One other important point is that they asked for more, and in particular, less expensive, recreational facilities.

 

VIII. Ответьте письменно на вопросы к тексту.

1. What do many parents say about their children?

2. What were the main reasons for the increasing crime rate according to Sir David McNee?

3. Who called for the return of corporal punishment?

Тесты для самостоятельной работы

Functions of courts

 

1. The primary function of any court system in any nation – to help keep domestic peace – is so obvious that it is rarely considered or mentioned. If there were no agency to decide impartially and authoritatively whether a person had committed a crime and, if so, what should be done with him, other persons offended by his conduct would take the law into their own hands and proceed to punish him according to their uncontrolled discretion. If there were no agency empowered to decide private disputes impartially and authoritatively, self-help, quickly degenerating into physical violence, would prevail and anarchy would result. Not even a primitive society could survive under such conditions. All social order would be destroyed. In this most basic sense, courts constitute an essential element in society's machinery for keeping peace.

2. In the course of helping to keep the peace, courts are called upon to decide controversies. If, in a criminal case, the defendant denies committing the acts charged against him, the court must choose between his version of the facts and the prosecution's; and if he asserts that his conduct did not constitute a crime, the court must decide whether his view of the law or the prosecution's is correct.

3. In a civil case, if the defendant disputes the plaintiff's account of what happened between them – for example, whether they entered into a certain agreement – or if he disputes the plaintiff's view of the legal significance of whatever occurred – for example, whether the agreement was legally binding – the court again must choose between the contentions of the parties. The issues presented to and decided by the court may be either factual, legal, or both.

4. It would be a mistake, however, to assume that courts spend all of their time deciding controversies. Many cases brought before them are not contested. They represent potential, rather than actual, controversies in which the court's role is more administrative than adjudicatory. The mere existence of a court renders unnecessary any very frequent exercise of its powers. The fact that it operates by known rules and with reasonably predictable results leads those who might otherwise engage in controversy to compose their differences.

5. Most people arrested and charged with crime in the common-law world plead guilty. If they do so understandingly and without coercion of any sort, there is no need to determine guilt, for the sole question is whether the defendant should go to jail, pay a fine, or be subjected to other corrective treatment. In civil-law countries some judicial inquiry into the question of guilt or innocence is required even after a confession. But the inquiry is brief and tends to be perfunctory. The main problem to be resolved, usually without contest, is what sentence should be imposed.

6. How quickly should judges act to remedy injustice and when should they consider an existing rule to be so established that its alteration calls for constitutional amendment or legislative enactment rather than judicial decision? As many dissenting opinions attest, judges themselves disagree on the answers to these questions, even when they are sitting on the same bench hearing the same case.

7. In some nations courts not only interpret legislation but determine its validity and in so doing sometimes render statutes inoperative. This happens only in nations that have written constitutions and have developed a doctrine of "judicial supremacy." The powers of the legislature are defined and limited; and that those limits may not be mistaken, or forgotten, the Constitution is written. To what purpose are powers limited, and to what purpose is that limitation committed to writing, if these limits may, at any time, be passed by those intended to be restrained? The distinction between a government with limited and unlimited powers, would be abolished, if those limits did not confine the persons on whom they are imposed, and if acts prohibited and acts allowed were of equal obligation. It is a proposition too plain to be contested, that the Constitution controls any legislative act repugnant to it.... It is emphatically the province and duty of the judicial department to say what the law is. Those, who apply the rule to particular cases, must of necessity expound and interpret that rule. If two laws conflict with each other, the courts must decide on the operation of each.

Precedent and common law

 

1. To speak of precedent as "binding" even in common-law systems is misleading. As already noted, earlier decisions can be and are distinguished when judges conclude that they are based upon situations different from those before the court in later cases. Even more significant, earlier decisions can be overruled by the courts that rendered them (not by courts lower in the judicial hierarchy) when the judges conclude that they have proved to be so erroneous or unwise as to be unsuited for current or future application.

2. The Supreme Court of the United States has overruled many of its own earlier decisions, to the con­sternation of those who yearn for a rigid separation of powers and who are unable to accept the inevitability of judicial lawmaking. Many of these overrulings are in the field of constitutional law, in which legislative correction of an erroneous judicial interpretation of the Constitution is impossible and in which the only alternative is the exceedingly slow, cumbersome, costly, and difficult process of constitutional amendment.

3. Nevertheless, the power to overrule decisions is not restricted to constitutional interpretations. It extends to areas of purely statutory and purely judge-made law as well, areas in which legislative action would be equally capable of accomplishing needed changes. Even in England, which has no written constitu­tion and which has traditionally followed a far more rigid doctrine of stare decisis than the United States, the House of Lords, in its role as the highest court, has announced its intention of departing from precedent "in appropriate cases."

4. The desirability of judicial lawmaking has long been the subject of lively debate in both civil- and common-law countries. That courts should not arrogate to themselves unrestricted legislative power is universally accepted. But if existing statutes and precedents are outmoded or barbarous as applied to specific cases before the courts, should not judges be able to change the law in order to achieve what they conceive to be just results or, stated differently, to avoid what they consider unjust results?

5. The extent to which the judges should be bound by statutes and case precedents as against their own ethical ideas and concepts of social, political, and economic policy is an important question, as is the matter of which should prevail when justice and law appear to the judges to be out of alignment with each other. These are questions upon which reasonable persons disagree vigorously even when they are in basic agreement on the proposition that some degree of judicial lawmaking is inevitable. What is mainly at issue is the proper tempo and scope of judicial change.

6. Armed with the authority asserted at this early date, the Supreme Court of the United States has held many statutes, federal as well as state, unconstitutional and has also invalidated executive actions that violated the Constitution. Even more suprising is the fact that lower courts also possess and exercise the same powers. Whenever a question arises in any U.S. court at any level as to the constitutionality of a statute or executive action, that court is obligated to determine its validity in the course of deciding the case before it.

7. The case may have been brought for the sole and express purpose of testing the constitutionality of the statute or it may be an ordinary civil or criminal case, in which a constitutional question incidental to the main purpose of the proceeding is raised. Of course, when a lower court decides a constitutional question, its decision is subject to appellate review, sometimes at more than one level. When a state statute is challenged as violating the state constitution, the final authority is the supreme court of that state; when a federal or state statute or a state constitutional provision is challenged as violating the Constitution of the United States, the ultimate arbiter is the Supreme Court of the United States.

8. In a few American states, questions as to the constitutional validity of a statute may be referred in abstract form to the state's highest court by the chief executive or the legislature for an advisory opinion. This, however, is unusual and, in any event, supplementary to the normal procedure of raising and deciding constitutional questions.