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Violence in American Society

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(1) For many foreigners, the "United States" and "violence" are virtual synonyms... Settlers first shot the British and then went on to shoot their way across the country. With the Civil War, armed conflicts with both Mexico and Spain, and the widespread extermination of Indians - America's 19th-century destiny was manifestly bloody. Famous Hollywood westerns like High Noon, The Gunfighter, Gunfight at the OK Corral and Last Train to Gun Hill helped reinforce the idea that much of America was lawless. Average citizens could take justice into their own hands and settle any disagreement with just one bullet... Oppression during the civil-rights movement and the Vietnam War did nothing to improve America's reputation as a peace-loving nation. And today? The images seen around the world would indicate that American citizens are in constant danger and that the police and the courts are inundated with ever-increasing crime. Mafia kings and murderers. Drug dealers and sexual deviants. Psychopaths and serial killers... Television shows like LAPD or Miami Vice and Hollywood "super productions" like Terminator or Collateral Damage have turned such violent themes into a multi-billion dollar "entertainment" industry.

(2) There is some truth to every stereotype and unfortunately America is indeed a relatively violent society. The Federal Bureau of Investigation ("FBI") presents its "Crime Clock" every year. For the year 2000, there was a murder every 33 minutes and a rape every 5 minutes. A serious crime wascommitted every 22 seconds and a car stolen every 15 seconds somewhere in the country...

First, however, there is a problem of definition. For the police, a "violent crime" is an act which falls into only one of four possible categories - murder, rape, robbery, or aggravated assault... But other analysts and social commentators insist that violence in American society is a much broader phenomenon and covers many aspects that are ignored by the authorities. Is poverty itself a kind of "violence" inflicted on the weakest members of society? Is pornography inherently "violent"?

(3) Feminist Andrea Dworkin argues that this "$10-bi!lion-a-year trade in Women as fantasy" is visual violence which actually "harms" women.) What about simple "incivility" and "road rage”? (This corresponds to extremely aggressive driving behavior. A motorist who is irritated by another driver's actions may respond by shouting and gesticulating. Or by dangerous practices like slamming into the "offending" vehicle and forcing it off the 'road... The National Highway Safety Administration report ed that of the 41,000 traffic deaths in the U.S. in 1997, two-thirds of them involved some aspect of road rage...) And can words themselves be "violent"? "Gangsta Rap" groups have been accused of inciting criminal activity... Production companies like "Death Row Records" or "Ruthless Records" have turned out songs for teenagers with titles like "Sop Gun", "Neighborhood Sniper' or "r~**k the Police" - glorifying drug use, guns and even the murder of police officers. Should cruelty to animals or environmental damage be considered acts of "criminal violence»? Is abortion "murder»? Is "medical-assisted suicide" just a form of euthanasia?

(4) In addition to these problems of basic definitions, the U.S. also has serious conflicts concerning constitutional interpretation... The second amendment - adopted in 1791 - states that: "a well-regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed". As the United States did not originally have an army, it made sense to allow ordinary Americans to defend themselves in times of danger. This constitutional clause has never been modified and many citizens believe that their right to own arms is still sacred - even if the historical circumstances which originally justified the text are no longer relevant.

(5) And many Americans do "keep and bear arms". One recent Gallup poll indicated that 49% of all U.S. households had a weapon - but this figure may be falling. The 1999 Sourcebook of Criminal Justice Statistics, for example, reported that more than half of American homes had a gun in 1993, but that by 1997 the percentage had dropped to "only" 42%... Of course, precise information is difficult to obtain. Weapons are relatively inexpensive and there is little real regulation of legal arms like pistols, rifles, shotguns, semiautomatic weapons and "antiques"... And given the considerable black-market activity in illegal arms - like assault weapons -any "official" statistics are, at best, simple approximations.

(6) Today, the interpretation of the second amendment remains very controversial, but it is interesting to note that - contrary to popular myth - guns might not have played a particularly important role in the early development of the country. During the pre-revolutionary period, for example, many colonies demanded that oil guns be stored in special arsenals - outside the home. Moreover, at the time, the price of a musket represented up to two months of an average salary - an exorbitant investment for the nation's poor farmers. Even after the revolution, only 15% of citizens reported possessing a weapon - half of which were no longer working (often due to rust corrosion.) America's "gun culture" is thus a relatively recent development in the nation's history -dating back to the 19th century.

(7) If the Constitution allows citizens to bear arms, the government does impose some regulations. This is called "gun control". There are only 6 federal laws in this area. The first two go back to the I930's - a period characterized by prohibition-era crime and an assassination attempt against Franklin D. Roosevelt. Certain "dangerous" weapons like machine-guns were taxed, manufacturers had to obtain an annual license and they could no longer sell such items to known criminals. The country waited another 30 years and experienced the horror of the King-Kennedy assassinations before it was ready or willing to pass stricter regulations in the form of the 1968 Gun Control Act More categories of citizens were prohibited from buying weapons (minors and the mentally ill, for example). Serial numbers were stamped onto all weapons and sellers were now forced to keep close records of all their transactions.

(8) Yet even such basic rules are considered by many to represent intolerable government intrusion. America's most influential pro-gun lobby is the "National Rifle Association" (or "NRA"). It uses its political power and considerable financial resources to try and impose its views. "The Founding Fathers... recognized that an armed citizenry represents the best way to fend off tyranny and oppression while preserving the... liberties that are so unique to our great nation". The NRA promises to inform its own members, the public, decision-makers and "...freedom-loving people the world-lover" about key topics, and its "James Madison Research Library" is designed to "...preserve the truth about American history and the second amendment - without censorship by the (left-wing) media textbooks".

(9) At the other end of the spectrum is the Brady Center to Prevent Gura Violence. It is somewhat paradoxical that it was a conservative who became the champion of stricter gun laws. James Brady was President Reagan's personal Press Secretary, in March of 1981, during the assassination attempt against the President, Brady was shot and seriously wounded. A frequent slogan used by gun enthusiasts is: "guns don't kill people - people do". And yet after Brady's personal struggle for survival, it became clear to him that if Americans had fewer weapons, then there would probably be fewer gun-related incidents. During the period from I960 to 2000, there were a total of 260,275 murders due to firearms in America - an average of 14,459 per year, or 40 gun-related homicides per day. (The statistics for gun-related suicides were even higher - 17,853.) In just 20 years, the total number of deaths attributable to firearms (including gun accidents) in the U.S. came to 620,525 - a figure about 50% higher than the total population-of Luxembourg...

(10) The Brady Organization is far from extremist. It has never proposed to make gun-ownership illegal in America. Its goal is to "prevent gun violence" in homes, schools, and the workplace - based on "sensible" gun laws. There seems to be little room for dialogue, however. Dr. Arthur Kellerman published a study in the well-known New England Journal of Medicine (October, 1993). His results indicated that guns at home were "...22 times more likely to kill a family member than to protect the family from an intruder". The NRA immediately counter-attacked, indicating that such "scientific" information was "bogus" - or totally unfounded and false. Despite such NRA protests, the I990's did see a substantial increase in the number of federal gun-control measures - even if they remained relatively timid.

(11) President Clinton signed the Brady Handgon Violence Prevention Act in November of 1993. Potential buyers would now become the subject of a "background check". Gun-dealers would first have to verify with the police that an individual had no criminal record before selling him a weapon. The following year, the Clinton administration went even further, passing the 1994 "Violent Crime Control and Enforcement Ad'. This law made it illegal to produce, sell or possess 19 different types of assault weapons - arms like Kalashnikovs or Berettas, with "special features" including bayonet mounts, grenade launchers or clips that hold more than ten rounds of ammunition...

(12) Obviously, such arms were not designed for sports-hunting or legitimate self-protection - yet the idea of more federal "interference" was nonetheless contested. In this debate, advocates of gun control discovered new allies - the police. While many officers had never been real supporters of stronger federal regulation, it was becoming clear that gangs in the U.S. were often better armed than the men and women who were paid to protect the public. Criminals were using special bullets that could pierce protective police-vests, and their sophisticated weapons were described by law-enforcement authorities as "nothing but cop-killer guns"...

(13) Fighting crime in America is a particularly difficult task as the system is highly decentralized. There are some 17,000 independent local authorities. Municipal police. County sheriffs. State patrolmen. Different federal authorities. Actual jurisdictions and responsibilities are sometimes unclear. Suppose that an individual is "missing"... The local police might then receive a ransom note. In the meantime, the criminal may have moved the person - to another city, another county or even another State... The victim might later be discovered dead - hundreds or even thousands of miles from the site of the original kidnappin g. Who exactly should be in charge of the investigation? The FBI is not a federal police force. It is merely a branch of the U.S. Department of Justice, responsible for investigating federal crimes. The objective is to share information effectively and to harmonize relations between the FBI and local police jurisdictions.)

(14) The country now uses a system called "Uniform Crime Reporting" ("UCR") to try and determine the evolution and characteristics of crime. The safest region in the U.S. is the North-East - while the South-East is the most dangerous. (The "Bible Belt" is thus America's "Crime Belt".) The most recent statistics from the U.S. Department of justice indicated that the crime rate had slightly decreased in rural areas, suburbs and small-sized cities - while there was a 1.9% increase in larger cities (250,000 to 500,000 inhabitants). In 2000 alone, 11, 605,751 crimes were officially reported but, again, such statistics are not completely reliable. Information is collected from criminal justice reports, surveys of victims and information provided by the criminals themselves... Yet, some offenses may never be declared. Women may be too ashamed to go to the police after a rape. Victims of gang violence may be too afraid to denounce their aggressors. Other official statistics for 1999, for example, showed over 14 million arrests... (This figure included about three million cases related to drug or alcohol abuse. Over a million cases each of assault and theft. Fraud, racketeering, forgery. 89,41 I cases of rape and 15,522 murders...)

(15) But whatever specific figures are considered, the global trends are not reassuring. The "crime rate" is established by taking the total number of reported incidents, divided by a fixed number of inhabitants (generally 100,000 people). Every year now, about I 3 million people - about 5% of the total population - are victims of "serious offenses". Of these, 1.5 million are victims of "extreme violence". Indeed, the situation remains frightening... even if the rate for some crimes - like murder - has actually been declining in recent years. The New York Times, for example, was able to inform its readers in March of 2002 that the municipal murder rate had never been lower since... 1962. During the previous month, the nation's largest city registered "only" 32 homicides -just one killing per day.

(16) There is no real agreement on the causes of such criminality... Poverty? "Bad" neighborhoods? Single-parent homes, characterized by absent fathers? A general lack of discipline? Social permissiveness? Violence on television? Easy access to guns? Genetics? The increase in drug use is certainly one explanation. " Hard-drugs " like heroin and cocaine became more common in the 1960's and addicts - or regular users - are often forced to commit crimes in order to pay for their expensive daily doses. Then "crack" began to invade America's poor inner-cities. This is also a form of cocaine, but it is quite cheap - only $10 for 1/4 of a gram, according to the "Cocaine User Helping Hand" web site. In street slang, expensive cocaine powder is referred to as the "champagne of drugs". Crack, which is just as addictive, is known as "cat's pee" - and younger and younger children can afford to buy it. According to one I 997 survey by the Department of Health and Human Services, there were 1.5 million regular cocaine users in the U.S. - "age 12 or older"...

(17) Much of the drug-dealing in crack is controlled by youth gangs. The Department of Justice estimated that 26,000 different gangs were operating in America in 1999. They had 840,500 members - 85% of them were ethnic minorities and virtually all were under the age of 25. Half of all police jurisdictions interviewed by the federal government reported significant gang activity in their areas - including criminal behavior inside local schools... (It should be noted, however, that gang violence is often directed toward rival gang members, rather than the genera! population.)

(18) It would thus appear that the U.S. is losing its "war on drugs ". First Lady Nancy Reagan had made this her personal cause back in the I980's. "Just say NO to Grugs.” was the slogan that was supposed to stop teenagers from experimenting with illegal substances... The "Drug Enforcement Agency " ("DEA") is responsible for eradicatin g domestic drug use - by offering "intelligence assistance" to drug-producing countries like Colombia and by "...bringing to justice the individuals involved in... the illicit traffic in the U.S." The funding of treatment programs has sharply declined - from 33% of the drug budget in 1981 to only 17.5% in 1998. Yet, during this same period, the total number of DEA "special investigators" and support personnel more than doubled. Over 30% of all the individuals accused of trafficking were not found guilty... And even in the 10,048 cases where culpability was established, only 90% actually led to a prison sentence (9,043 in all). The DEA's "success rate" in 1998 was thus a very unimpressive 47.7%... The government has certainly failed to "eradicate" drug use in America... Marijuana, cocaine, heroin, LSD, ecstasy and amphetamines remain available on street-corners and in school-yards across the country.

(19) Yet a generalized feeling of insecurity has caused America - both average citizens and government authorities - to "get tough on crime". An increase in very strict anti-crime laws has led to an explosion in the U.S,prison population. The Bureau of Justice Statistics indicated that, in 2002, there were 2 million prisoners in America - a 70% increase in just ten years. Over 12% of all Black males between the ages of 20 and 34 were in jail. America has only 5% of the world's inhabitants - but 25% of the world's incarcerated population. In 1998, 58.9% of all federal prisoners were behind bars for drug infractions - and 80% of these offenders were members of a racial minority...

(20) California, for example, created a system in 1994 called "three strikes and you're out" (an allusion to baseball terminology). The law was first passed, and then submitted to voters - who approved it by referendum. The objective was to "significantly increase the prison sentences" of recidivists. Now, anyone found guilty of a second "felony" (a serious offense according to the law) would automatically receive a sentence too as long as that given for a first infraction. "Good behavior" while in prison would no longer have any real effect on reducing the length of the initial jail-term. Moreover, any successive felony - of whatever nature, violent or not - would lead to an automatic sentence of "25 years to life in prison". The results of the "3-Strikes" reform have been mixed. The California crime rate has been reduced since 1995 - but it is not clear what different factors might explain this trend. The draconian measure has had some unexpected negative consequences - including a certain paralysis of the court system,..

(21) Both California officials and opponents of the law seem to agree that some substantial modifications may be necessary... In 1999, the State sent 900 new "second-strikers" to the penitentiary every month - to serve sentences twice as long as usual. In addition, 100 "third-strikers" were incarcerated every month... Between!995 and 2000, California thus put 35,000 additional individuals behind bars for at least 25 years. Yet most of these recidivists are not guilty of violent crimes - they have stolen repeatedl y or have been caught using a "controlled substance" (a drug).

(22) Americans are not particularly "soft" when it comes to juvenile delinquency either, Many offenders indeed began their criminal careers as youngsters. A number of areas have thus implemented "zero-tolerance" programs. This means that all children will immediately be held responsible for any offenses they have committed - however "minor". Stealing car radios or spray-painting school walls will no longer be followed by a simple "don't-do-it-again discussion". Such behavior will lead to "...swift, certain, severe disciplinary action", according to the Dorsey Ville Middle School in Pittsburgh, for example. It has its own special program to deal with "...crime, drug and alcohol abuse, suicide, gun infractions, and pregnancy" - all this especially designed for the 1,100 children age / 1-to-13 who go there...

(23) "Young offenders" may be very young indeed, In California, for example, the legal definition of a "juvenile" infraction is any crime committed by a child age ten or older. More and more States have also voted to take a number of teenagers out of the juvenile court system. Nationwide, 8% of all individuals arrested for murder... are under age 18. And recent episodes of extreme school violence have shocked the nation. School-shootings from West Paducah, Kentucky to Springfield, Oregon. From Bethel, Alaska to Littleton, Colorado. Littleton is a small, predominantly white community outside Denver. The town's local Columbine High Schoolunfortunately made national news in 1999... 2 male students there - self-declared members of the "Trench-coat Mafia" - had expressed racist ideas and a desire for violent revenge. One day in April, they came to school fully armed, and began shooting students and teachers. By the time special police-forces arrived and gained control of the situation, there were 15 dead (including the 2 killers themselves) and 20 seriously wounded. The "Brady Center" for gun control has presented some chilling information concerning violence inside U.S. schools... One survey indicated that 29% of all high-school boys owned guns - and many brought them to school. The reasons they gave? "To impress friends, improve self-esteem, or for self-defense while going to and from school", according to the Survey of the American Teacher. In 1995, another survey showed that 42% of all students in ghetto-area schools knew how to obtain a gun if they wanted one - and two-thirds were convinced they could get one within just 24 hours...

(24) The evolution of some other aspects of violence in America is perhaps more difficult to evaluate - particularly "hate crimes", domestic violence and child abuse... Is it that the incidence of such crimes is actually increasing, or simply that more and more individuals are coming forward to report these serious offenses to the police.A "hate crime" is legally defined as "...a criminal offense committed against a person [or property] which is motivated - in whole or in part - by the offender's [prejudice] against a race, religion, disability, sexual orientation, or ethnicity of national origin". But it was not until 1990 that the Congress passed a law making it obligatory for the police even to keep statistics on the question of prejudice-related crime... In 2000, there were 8,152 incidents reported to the FBI - well over half were related to racist violence, 18% were motivated by religious intolerance, and over 16% involved crimes against homosexuals...

(25) The FBI's 1999 list of hate-crime statistics is 125 pages long - but all these figures do not really describe the horrifying violence born of prejudice.!n June of 1998, for example, a middle-aged Black man, James Byrd, was picked up by three Whites along a deserted road near Jasper, Texas. They tied Byrd's ankles to the back of their pick-up truck and drove off. The victim was "dragged to death" - "and his torn arm, head, and torso were recovered along a 2-mile stretch of road", according to ABC News. The main instigator, 24-year-old John W. King, had already been to prison and had developed ties to racist groups there. King is currently on "death row" - awaiting execution for his crime - but has created his own web site, indicating that his death sentence is really only the result of his "political and religious beliefs..."

(26) A second category of largely "under-reported" crime concerns "domestic violence".Policemen have often been reluctant to intervene in such "family disputes"... Yet, in 1998 the U.S. Department of Justice published some frightening figures... As many as 4 million American women are physically abused every year... by their "intimate partners". In just 5 years (1996-2001) the emergency "Domestic Violence Hotline" received 700,000 calls for assistance. Many women end up in hospital emergency-rooms - which "costs the nation $5 to $10 billion annually in medical expenses", according to the government. Such abuse has profound and lasting effects on the victims themselves - as well as on the children who live in such families...

America's children are perhaps the most vulnerable of all victim s. "Child abuse" is all too frequent but specific statistics are difficult to obtain. The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services tries to maintain data, yet its own information is based on "...the number of cases reported to local “Child Protective Services' —which is small compared with the actual number..." 1 million cases of "child abuse", at least 140,000 serious injuries, and about 1,500 deaths per year... Each State is free to establish its own legal definitions - but such abuse of minors is generally considered to be an act - perpetrated by a parent, caretaker or other adult - which results in death, serious physical or emotional harm, sexual abuse or exploitation. Physical violence, neglect, molestation, rape, incest...

(27) In the early 1990's, little Megan Kanka - age 7 - was found raped and murdered near her home in New jersey. When her parents discovered that the assassin - a new neighbor in town - was a multi-recidivist, they pushed for legislative changes and the State adopted "Megan's Law"in 1994. This made it obligatory to follow all dangerous sex offenders once they had left prison. The authorities now had to notify nearby parents, schools, and day-care centers of the presence of such individuals.

(28) The American "crime problem"? Drug-related offenses, guns and gangs, violent teenagers and vulnerable women and children... It is no real surprise, then, that the U.S. has a homicide ratewhich is about twice as high as France's - and 8 times higher than that of Denmark... Four different American Presidents have been killed (Lincoln, Garfield, McKinley and Kennedy) - and at least 5 others have been victims of assassination attempts. Numerous political leaders have been murdered (Robert Kennedy, Martin Luther King, Malcolm X) - and even entertainment stars like John Lennon... Thousands of innocent individuals are killed every year - some of whom are the victims of " serialkillers"...

(29) The FBI has no real indication of just how many murderous psychopaths there are in the U.S., but specialists have indicated that such criminals are often "intelligent, rational... and incurable". Some of these criminals have become almost legendary... Ted Bundy - guilty of multiple murders, followed by necrophilia and decapitation. G.j. Schaefer- a former policeman - in jai! since 1973 for 2 murders - but suspected of 30 more. Ott/'s Tools - sentenced to death in Florida - who admitted to over 100 murders and... acts of cannibalism. Ed Kemper - who gave a television Interview from inside his California prison. As a young boy, Kemper liked to play "gas chamber" and he tortured neighbors' pets. He was sent to jail at only 14 for having killed his grandparents. At 18, he was released from prison - and immediately murdered numerous women. His fantasy? "...I wanted to possess the severed heads of women", he confessed to journalists.

(30) In the 1960's, the FBI's "elucidation rate" for homicide was about 90% - but one agency insider admitted that it was "alarming" that, nearly 30 years later, only 68% of all murders were being solved... Yet when a killer is found and taken to court, is the death penalty(also known as "capital punishment") morally justifiable? Is it constitutionally permissible? Is it possible to give the death sentence to a person who is mentally retarded? Is it constitutional to execute criminals who were minors when they committed their terrible crimes? In both cases, the Justices voted in the affirmative...

(31) Today, most Americans still support the death penalty - but perhaps lie opinion is beginning to change. In the mid-1990's, certain surveys showed that up to 80% of the population was in favor of the death penalty - but by 2001 polls taken by both USA Today and ABC News showed that this figure had dropped to about 60%. Most citizens agreed that capital punishment had no dissuasive effect on future criminals - and over half of Americans said they would favor abolishing such executions if they were certain that those found guilty of terrible offenses would indeed receive a sentence of "life in prison with no chance of parole" (early release).

(32) Moreover, a group of motivated students from Northwestern University began research into just one death-row case and conclusively proved that Anthony Porter (with an IQ of... 51) - who had been in prison awaiting execution for 16 years - was not guilty. Genetic DMA evidence has since been used to prove that dozens of other "guilty" criminals were not, in fact, guilty at all... Legal specialists and criminoiogists at Columbia University published "the most far-reaching study of the death penalty in the U.S.", according to the New York Times in 2002. Its conclusions? "Capital punishment is riddled with unfairness and incompetence, with serious errors... at every stage of the process... The system is collapsing under the weight of the tremendous volume of errors... The time is ripe to fix the death penalty... or to end it."

(33) Other types of crime in America may be much less "violent" - yet still cause considerable damage. The notion of "white-collar crime"was first introduced by E.H. Sutherland at a meeting of the American Sociological Society... in 1939. Unlike "street crime", the white-collar variety is generally an economic or corporate infraction, characterized by "a violation of trust", and committed by "a person of respectability and high social status"... The FBI admits that "...there is a limited amount of information available" concerning these kinds of crimes... Yet the headlines of daily newspapers have certainly made Americans aware of massive offenses against their property and their personal interests.

(34) Corporate crime is perhaps as difficult to assess as "organized crime" - but both are extremely lucrative. The Mafiahas its origins in feudal Sicily, but the massive Italian immigration of the 19th century certainly brought its network of criminal bands - or "families" - to the U.S. A! Capone - and his illicit activities in the 1930's - is legendary. The Godfather with Marlon Brando (based on the book by Mario Puzo) gave the world a more updated version of Mafia activities in America - from contraband to smuggling narcotics, the control of casinos and prostitution, the infiltration of trade-unions and political organizations, money "laundering" using "respectable" businesses... In 2002, the U.S. Department of Justice specifically identified a number of priorities in this area - the "La Cosa Nostra" network, "Russian Organized Crime" (or "ROC"), and "...the approximately 25 Asian organized-crime groups-operating in the U.S...11 Such illegal activity is no longer limited to the East Coast or the Italian community - federal authorities have identified major crime rings in cities as diverse as Buffalo, Detroit, Dallas, Kansas City, Denver, and San Francisco...

(35) Virtually all Americans would agree that the U.S. is characterized by too much violence - for which the nation inevitably pays a terribly high price, both financially and socially. Yet the consensus seems to stop there... Yes, there is undeniably a problem - but what should be done about it? Should the country build even more prisons (some of which have already been privatized in an effort to make them more "efficient")? Focus on more repression — or on prevention? Improve the judicial system - so that Blacks and Whites, the rich and the poor are truly "equal before the law»? How? Accept a loose interpretation of the 2nd Amendment and easy access to weapons - or pass strict gun-control laws? Maintain the death penalty - or abolish it?

(36) There are no definitive answers to these questions, but the very existence of such open public debate was intended by the "Founding Fathers" to be the guarantee of a truly free society. This is what they wrote in the very first amendment of the "Bill of Rights"...

 

[The author's most sincere gratitude goes to both the graphic artist (Davicl Hollenbach) and his agent (Frank Sturges) who facilitated the use of this image. Copyright 2001. David Hollenbach - www.sturgesreps.com].

 

AT HOME

1. Make a list of types of crime.

2. In the text find the reasons that cause high crime rate.

3.

 

 


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