Capital punishment: for and against

The fundamental questions raised by the death penalty are whether it is an effective deterrent to violent crime, and whether it is more effective than the alternative of long-term imprisonment. Study the information below and give your opinion on this problem.

· Do you agree that capital punishment can be seen as a deterrent to violent crime?

· Can capital punishment be considered as the society’s desire for retribution?

· Should murderers be subject to the principle ‘an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth’ and receive the death penalty?

· Should we try to correct the offender’s moral attitudes and anti-social behaviour and to assist him or her to return to normal life (to rehabilitate the offender) in any case?

TASK 14. Study the information below and give your opinion on the problem of corruption.

Corruption - improper and usually unlawful conduct intended to secure a benefit for oneself or another. Its forms include bribery, extortion, and the misuse of inside information. It exists where there is community indifference or a lack of enforcement policies. In societies with a culture of ritualized gift giving, the line between acceptable and unacceptable gifts is often hard to draw. Corruption obtains when an official transfers a benefit to an individual who may or may not be entitled to the benefit, in exchange for an illegal payment (the bribe). By taking the bribe, the official breaks a legally binding promise he gave to his ‘principal’ (usually the state administration or a private company) to allocate the benefit to those entitled to it. Corruption is neither a property of a social system or an institution, nor a trait of an individual's character, but rather an illegal exchange.

Many argue that in the long term corruption breeds inefficiency. Also, with multiple officials and many potential bribers, corruption can generate further corruption, leading a country to fall into a ‘trap’ where bribery is pervasive. In extreme cases, where everybody takes bribes, the concept loses analytical clout.

In accordance with its own empirical findings, the World Bank, which studies the problem of corruption, promotes policies fostering economic deregulation and liberalization, civil liberties, and the rule of law. Yet, no single recipe exists to eradicate corruption and more work is needed to isolate mechanisms that fetter this social bad.

DEBATE

Read the newspaper article below and answer the following questions:

· What do you think about the problem of corruption in Russia and in other countries?