Question

If it is not only possible but even easy to predict which ten-year-old boys are at greatest risk of growing up to be persistent offenders (慣犯), what are we doing with the information? The last thing that we should do is to wait until their troubles have increased in adolescence and then attack them with the new Criminal Justice Bill.

If this bill becomes law, more young people will be drawn into prisons and all the evidence shows that this worsens rather than improves their future. The introduction of short sharp punishment will simply give more young people a taste of something else they don’t need and if you want to train someone to be anti-society, "I can’t think of a better way to do it" says the writer of this report.

The Cambridge Institute of Criminology comes up with five key factors that are likely to make for adolescence crimes: a low income family, a large family, parents regarded by social workers to be bad at raising children, parents who themselves have a criminal record, and low intelligence in the child. Of the 63 boys in the sample who had at least three of them when they were ten, half became criminals—compared with only a fifth of the sample as a whole.

Three more factors make the prediction more accurate: being judged troublesome by teachers at the age of ten, having a father with at least two criminal records and having another member of the family with a criminal record. Of the 35 men who had at least two of these factors in their background, 18 became persistent offenders and 8 more were in trouble with the law.

The role of the schools is recognized as extremely important. The most reliable prediction of all on the futures of boys came from teachers’ ratings of how troublesome they were at the age of ten. If the information is there in the classroom, there must be a response that brings more attention to those troublesome children: a search for things to give them praise rather than academic achievement, a refusal to allow them to go on playing truant, and a promoting of ambition and opportunity which should start early in their school careers.

46. According to the author, adolescence crimes should be dealt ______.

  A. before they become adolescents

　B. when they are put into prison

　C. when they are in the period of adolescence

　D. when the problem becomes serious

47. The number of young offenders could be reduced by the way of ______.

　A. setting new legal system

　B. helping with their academic performance

　C. applying brief periods of severe punishment

　D. knowing about their backgrounds　　

48. Ten-year-old children likely to become offenders are usually______.

　A. spoilt children from small families

　B. bright children in a poor family

　C. slow children with many brothers and sisters

　D. children whose parents gain wealth dishonestly

49. The writer concludes that potential offenders could be helped by ______.

　A. making less trouble through self discipline

　B. being given more encouragement at school

　C. being permitted to leave school as they like 

　D. stricter treatment from teachers

Answer 1

ADCB