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After working with this theme you should have
- gained vocabulary related to crime
-  increased understanding for the causes behind different kinds of crime
-  reflected on pros and cons concerning different approaches to punishment
- obtained experience and knowledge when it comes to investigating on world famous criminals
- experience on oral presentations

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The text "A-Z of Crime" is a series of world famous crime cases. In most cases murder. Read the text and choose one case to investigate on the internet.

When you finish your research you should prepare an oral presentation on 5-10 minutes.

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Why would a young person become a terrorist? Is it poverty related and all about ignorance or could there be other reasons?

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Why would a young person become a terrorist? Is it poverty related and all about ignorance or could there be other reasons?

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Watch the video with professor Haroon Ullah from Georgetown University who explains why people become religious extremist and terrorists according to his research.

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Why Do People Become Islamic Extremists?

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In the documentary Manhunt Boston Bombers we following  the police through their investigation until the final capture of the two perpetrators from the terror attack at the Boston Marathon 2013.

Watch the documentary here:

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Manhunt Boston Bombers Blast   Full documentary HD

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Uploaded by Secrets of the Universe on 2015-07-31.

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Please open the document attached and answer the questions.

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Please open the document and answer the questions.

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Why would a young person join a gang when all statistic evidence show that it is bound to go wrong at some point?

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Why would a young person join a gang when all statistic evidence show that it is bound to go wrong at some point?

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Look at the webpage called Gang Alternatives Program and prepare a presentation on reasons to join a gang. The presentation could be an essay or an oral presentation.

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On the webpage, you will see a list of the most common reasons that youngsters choose to join a gang.

Please use these listed reasons to give as many examples as possible from the movie “Coach Carter” or from another movie you can think of.

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Read one of the two articles below. The first one is from a christian magazine called "The Christian Science Monitor. 

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Read one of the two articles below. The first one is from a christian magazine called "The Christian Science Monitor. 

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Part of a continuing series about complexity science by the Santa Fe Institute and The Christian Science Monitor, generously supported by Arizona State University.
In the aftermath of any terrorist act, our instinct is to try to make sense of the brutality by assigning a person's or a group's violent radicalization to one or two probable causes: religious extremism and economic disparity, for example.

If we could only find a simple cause, our thinking goes, we might find a simple solution - blocking the influx of potentially dangerous ideas and people, or sending more military power to excise terrorist strongholds.

Such simplifications help us cope and make for powerful political messages, but it's clear that no single factor can explain violent radicalization. Inevitably, such narrow-sighted reactions only make the problem evolve into a different, and potentially more dangerous, beast.

Welcome to complex social systems, where the interactions of many individuals immersed in particular socio-economic circumstances lead to the emergence of sometimes surprising social phenomena, from fashion trends to political movements, from conspiracy theories to financial crises, and from religious rituals to jihads.

Complexity science can help us understand the underlying social systems from which these problems emerge; we should let it guide us in developing a thoughtful, science-based policy for dealing with them.

What drives a terrorist?

Decades of research have, thus far, not revealed any common psychopathological symptoms among terrorists. They appear to want some of the same things most of us want: recognition from their peers and communities and better lives for the people they care about.

Being a devout member of a particular religion is not a good predictor of violence, either. Many deadly terrorist acts are unrelated to religious ideology. In recent years, Islamic values have been used to promote warmongering ideas across cultural and national borders by invoking the authority of widely revered holy figures and scriptures. But Islam is not terrorism and terrorism is not Islam.

Nor is the tactic of co-opting broadly accepted values or authorities to promote a certain idea unique to the current wave of "Islamic terrorism." Politicians and interest groups routinely build on shared values such as freedom, family values, or religious doctrines to promote their agendas.

Economic circumstances are an important but not paramount contributor to violent radicalization in the West. Poverty and limited job opportunities do cripple one's chances of achieving life goals, and discrimination is a real problem for many minorities. But very few poor or discriminated-against people become terrorists, and a significant number of terrorists have led stable middle-class lives.

Youth on the edge

So what can we say are the genuine markers of violent radicalization in the West today? As noted by anthropologist Scott Atran, political scientist Olivier Roy, and other prominent terrorism scholars, three consistent characteristics are common to recent perpetrators of terror, and these hold for past terrorist movements, as well:

Terrorists tend to be young, rarely older than 30 and usually in their early 20s.

Terrorists feel resentment toward mainstream society because of perceived or real injustices they have experienced, and they often feel frustrated that they are unable to obtain justice.

Before they became violent, most terrorists spent time in close contact with like-minded peers or charismatic leaders.

In essence, we are dealing with disgruntled young people who do unexpected or dangerous things under the social influence of their peers and role models - a.k.a. the common adolescent. And yet, only a small fraction of disgruntled young people stumbles into behaviors that are significantly more dangerous than making severe fashion statements or partying excessively.

To understand how a seemingly "normal" person can become a terrorist, we need to understand not only how individuals are wired, but also how people are wired together.

Social animals

Social science suggests that all of us are defined by who we hang out with in at least three key ways:

1. The people around us influence how we perceive the global society. In other words, we use our own social milieu to make inferences about how people we don't know live their lives. But this may backfire when we live in homogeneous social environments and rarely meet people living in different circumstances. English psychologist Rael Dawtry and his colleagues have shown, for example, that people who live in richer neighborhoods perceive income distribution in the general population as more fair than it really is. Consequently, they are less likely to support policies aimed at reducing the gap between rich and poor.

2. Our social circles have a strong influence on our own beliefs and behaviors. In the 1950s, conformity experiments by social psychologist Solomon Asch showed that some people will disregard objective facts if everyone else opposes them. More recently, social scientists Nicholas Christakis and James Fowler have found that people tend to mirror their social contacts when it comes to dietary habits, smoking and drinking, and even emotions. This similarity reflects the underlying processes of social influence and the tendency to befriend like-minded people.

3. We feel good when others agree with us and bad when they disagree. All of us have experienced unpleasant feelings arising when someone expresses opinions we profoundly disagree with. These feelings of anger and frustration were labeled cognitive dissonance by the psychologist Leon Festinger. They motivate us to try to influence disagreeing others, and if that fails, stop communicating with them altogether.

What I've described so far are all useful aspects of human sociality that help us to learn from each other, form efficiently functioning groups, and stand as one against a common enemy when needed. In fact, many scientists agree that our ability to learn from and cooperate with others may be the cornerstone of the spectacular success of our species. But sometimes our advanced sociality helps spread beliefs that are harmful to a society.

How beliefs form and change

Complexity science - by its nature an amalgam of fields - permits us to pull together techniques and tools from cognitive and social psychology, network theory, anthropology, political science, economics, statistical physics, computation, and more for deeper quantitative insights into social systems than any single field can offer. This can help us study how our social-cognitive processes interact with and shape our social networks and our broader economic and political circumstances, and gives us hope of explaining when and why harmful beliefs spread.

Consider a social-cognitive process called social sampling. Our social environments - dominated by our social contacts and the media - constantly serve up a menu of beliefs and behaviors we might try. Most are harmless or beneficial, such as a new fashion fad or an improved technology. But some, such as excessive nationalism or denigrating entire ethnic or religious groups, can be very dangerous. Some people, depending on their social environments, and in particular on the diversity of their social contacts and media sources, will be exposed to such dangerous ideas more frequently than others.

A second important process, belief updating, determines whether we will accept a novel idea coming from our social environments. Its outcome depends on the strength of our own views, formed by a lifetime of experiencing our own particular societal circumstances. But it also depends on views of the social contacts we most respect, feel personally close to, or wish to impress. Hence, we are more likely to accept a dangerous idea if it aligns with our own experiences and is supported by the people we value.

A third, significant social-cognitive process is network updating. An easy way to avoid the unpleasant feelings of cognitive dissonance is to not discuss our beliefs with contacts who disagree, or to cease socializing with them altogether. As a result, our social circles become more homogeneous, and beliefs our former peers might have considered extreme are no longer challenged by anyone important to us.

None of these processes in isolation is dangerous per se. But taken together, in some societal circumstances, they can feed a spiral leading some individuals toward increasingly extreme and sometimes dangerous beliefs.

Systemic understanding

The social-cognitive processes I have described are shaped by millennia of human biological and cultural evolution. Suppressing them would not only be very difficult, it would also be counter-productive. In most parts of our lives, they are essential and desirable components of our exceptionally well developed sociality.

What we might change are the inputs to these processes: the content of individuals' social samples, the personal experiences shaping their views, the diversity of their social circles, and the ease of making and breaking new social connections. In turn, these processes will feed back into and act upon our society. Understanding this cycle can help us design interventions that affect not only one of its parts, but have positive feedback effects throughout the system.

Consider, for example, interventions targeting the input to social sampling processes, such as paying attention to the information available to young people on social media, or crowding out dangerous ideas by suggesting alternative ways for young people to join exciting and meaningful causes and achieve peer respect. By altering the ingredients of the idea menu they are exposed to, we might, in turn, minimize the dangerous inputs to the processes of belief and network updating.

Interventions targeting belief updating processes include exposing chauvinist and violent ideas disguised as legitimate spiritual or patriotic values. In many cases, these interventions would need to come from within the affected communities - and be championed by their internal role models.

Equally important for belief updating processes is improving the economic and political circumstances that limit young people's opportunities to achieve life goals in non-violent ways. By eliminating some of the justifications for the acceptance of violent ideas and providing peaceful paths to self-realization, such interventions also shape the content of people's social samples.

Interventions that target network updating, such as efforts to avoid alienating youth from mainstream society or to identify those in the process of withdrawing, will in turn affect inputs into their social sampling and belief updating processes.

And so on. The social-cognitive-environment feedback cycle offers many potential points of intervention.

None of these ideas is new, of course. All have been tried or are being implemented in different countries and communities. Nor are they, in isolation, the final solutions to the problem of violent radicalization.

Complexity science can help us take in the bigger, messier picture. We can build quantitative, empirically grounded computer models - simulations - of how these interacting processes interact with and influence people and the societies in which they are embedded. Within these models, we can try interventions and see if they succeed or fail. We can design ensembles of strategies with synergistic effects, then evaluate them and their effects on the system as a whole rather than as isolated tactics.

Ultimately, by thinking more deeply about the many ways we influence each other within our complex social circumstances, we might find ourselves better able to comprehend and cope with terrorism - and the other emergent social challenges that keep vexing us: the debate for and against immigration, the gun control conundrum, the ongoing redefinition of gender roles, or anger-fed political movements.
Enjoy this article? Subscribe to the Monitor's Science newsletter for news and analysis in your inbox each week. Mirta Galesic is the Cowan Chair in Human Social Dynamics at the Santa Fe Institute and an adjunct researcher at the Center for Adaptive Behavior and Cognition at the Max Planck Institute for Human Development in Berlin. She studies how simple cognitive mechanisms interact with properties of the external environment to produce complex social phenomena.

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Part of a continuing series about complexity science by the Santa Fe Institute and The Christian Science Monitor, generously supported by Arizona State University. In the aftermath of any terrorist act, our instinct is to try to make sense of the brutality by assigning a person's or a group's violent radicalization to one or two probable causes: religious extremism and economic disparity, for example.

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The second one is the light news media called "Wonderlist". 

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The second one is the light news media called "Wonderlist". 

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There are so many things that life can offer them- girls, money, career opportunity, love from the family and entertainment- yet they choose to become terrorists. Why young people become terrorists?

10. They are confused

Many of the young boys that are susceptible to hiring by the terrorist organizations have had any traumatic experiences in life that leaves their self esteem damaged. Out of the many reports of missing young men, it is noticeable that many of them have been targets of ostracism, slander or over-protection by the family. They are either too sensitive or too intelligent. The smoothness of this world does not appeal them. What happens in this world is not enough for them. They look for more. They look for answers. Answers that their family members are unable to provide. They ask themselves "who am I" and it happens that they are just ordinary beings with no specialty about them. When young people become terrorists, they seek this specialty. They are looking for an identity. Something beyond their name and family. Terrorists have come from "at-risk" populations like Richard Reid; the shoe bomber and Umar Faruk; the underwear bomber.

9. Sense of belonging

Suppose a boy is living in affluence with parents providing for everything. There is no meaning in his life. There is nothing to strive for. He is looking forward to go to college but he feels like he doesn't belong there. What is next? Psychologists and their related research has argued that terrorist organizations are attractive to the vulnerable portion of the society. There is a strong sense of affiliation when the young people join their "brothers in faith" as each action is watched upon and each action is appreciated. Every talk, every thought is sought after by the "elders" in these organizations. A person who has had no real meaning in life now has a defined purpose. Instead of just being a passive supporter of the cause, he is now an active terrorist.

8. Vengeance is sweet!

Look around yourself, tune in to some international news channel. The headlines are flooded with talks about Syria, Libya, Iraq, ISIS, Gaza Strip, Kashmir and Lebanon. Everywhere Muslims are being slaughtered like vegetables. Be it Russian bombs or Saudi Air Force, everyone takes privilege of killing the "terrorists" during which innocent civilians are also killed. Organizations that recruit terrorists around the world use vengeance as an impetus to drive passion amongst their recruits.

"It is a war against Islam " is a take home phrase for people belonging to the HR department of these organizations. Georgetown Professor Bruce Hoffman has suggested that these people present jihad as being the only means to correct what it wrong. They inculcate hatred for the West in the minds of young people.

7. Thrill

According to a study conducted by the United States Institute for Peace, out of 2032 interviewed young terrorists, 101 or so joined out of boredom. Occasionally, teenagers will alienate themselves from the world around them and turn to technology and video games that would involve fighting and wars. This medium would present jihad as glorious and powerful. Ultimately, these kids will join organizations in order to kill their nothing-to-do-ness for a cause that they think is just.

Ed Macy identifies three types of warriors in Afghanistan after 2001. The last of which were those who did it just because they had nothing else to do with their lives. They were used by the greater forces prevalent in the fight. This type of recruitment is quite common in the Gaza strip where less educated individuals join organizations because they have nothing else to do.

6. The Internet lures sympathy

While Dan Brown mentions how the internet traffic all over the world flows through the servers at NSA, we are surprised at how this kind of information reaches boys who radicalize because of sympathizing with some group that is active on the internet. Did you know that the ISIS also has a remarkable internet presence?

So people will search for entertainment, for ideologies and cultures and for belongingness when lo and behold, they will see something that would strike them as "this is it!"

Jihad Jane attempted suicide before converting to Islam. She then spent some time surfing on the internet before she became an active terrorist. She was recruited by the al-Qaeeda which wanted her to fly to Sweden and kill the cartoonist that created a caricature of the Prophet PBUH, but was caught by FBI in 2009.

5. Disenchantment

One man's freedom fighter is another man's terrorist, a fact that can be easily linked with the upsurge of violence in the world. There are many factors that could make people "terrorists" but it is usually very simple. Race, religion, class and ideology doesn't matter when a group of people starts to feel disenchanted. They can easily organize themselves beneath the nose of the government that they are living under. Mubarak in Egypt underestimated the power of social media in helping the revolts organize. Though relatively nascent, Twitter, Facebook and Whatsapp! do have the energy to drive groups towards organization. How it goes unchecked we don't really know, but when people get their ideas across these platforms it reaches thousands of people. When even a few sympathize- they are a cult.

4. Fear & Anger

We already talked about hatred towards the West but the recruiters also exploit the very basic feelings of fear and anger. Scare a man about the force lurking beyond borders and tell him that it is coming for his sister, daughter or his mother and then see how he reacts. A man will die for his honour and in the Islamic culture, women have been symbolized as honour and dignity for centuries.
Tell a man stories of how certain soldiers in Gaza stripped a woman naked and raped her. Let him know how a certain group of men from the powerful West are desecrating the holy shrines of Muslims. Make him angry towards the forces that are fighting innocent "Muslim" civilians. Let him know that everything that is happening in the world is against Muslims and everything that the Muslims are going through is because of a conspiracy that has especially been designed to eradicate them from this world. There are literally countless philosophies about this prevalent in the world. Any one of these can strike a man.

3. Power Move

Have you come across the images presented by ISIS on social media? Black, a sign of omen, a colour of mourning exudes the power of death. It is the only colour that is most noticeable in any image that is uploaded on the web. Symbolism aside, check out some pictures showing a helpless blindfolded man in the middle of a group of armed men and then watch a video showing the same group beheading the person. What message does it propagate? Yea, power! Everything about ISIS and other terrorist groups on the internet is a show of power. It is highly appealing to the youth who have a lot of energy to spare. The raging hormones are looking for an outlet which unfortunately the age of technology is not providing. They don't move, they don't gym it- they lazy away on their couches, letting the frustration build up inside. That is when the recruiters strike. They watch out for boys who want to exude power.

2. Poverty

That is one of the main reasons in countries in the Eastern part of the world. The West could also show a few boys from this category but it is mostly the Asian countries that are a nursery for vulnerable poor boys. ISIS might have cut down on salary but it is paying higher than the regular army recruiters anywhere in the world. How is that for someone who has a mother dying of Tuberculosis due to malnutrition and a sister who doesn't have enough to get married? Would a brother to seven younger siblings with a paralysed father not fall for the trap? Even if he is killed during the operations, there are programs for taking care of the family after his death. Some organizations give enough compensation to the family that could actually make them thank divinity that one of them died. Cruel yes, but true.

1. Salvation

Death is an ultimate reality and the concept of life after death is a very vivid portion of the Islamic teachings. There are verses in the Quran that guarantee a place in Heaven for those who die in the way of Islam. What kind of Islam, this Islam or that Islam- that is besides the question. The recruiters will start with talks about lush scenery, plentiful bounties, never ending life, a personal palace, seventy women with beauty never seen, beverages and fruit that taste better than anything and so on. They do not mention anything about whether the way they decipher certain verses is right or not. Some recruiters are working merely for fulfilling the agenda of intelligence agencies but on the face of it, they are the "pious leaders" of the youth, the purpose of whose life is nothing but to die in the name of Islam. They use Islam to lure youngsters and use them for ill doings that are sometimes not justifiable through any verse and yet the mind is brainwashed in such a way that the young-boy-who-is-a-terrorist can't even think otherwise.

10 Reason why young people become terrorists

They are confused

Sense of belonging

Vengeance is sweet!

Thrill

The Internet lures sympathy

Disenchantment

Fear & Anger

Power Move

Poverty

1. Salvation

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Top 10 Reason Why Young People Become Terrorists

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There are so many things that life can offer them- girls, money, career opportunity, love from the family and entertainment- yet they choose to become terrorists. Why young people become terrorists? Many of the young boys that are susceptible to hiring by the terrorist organizations have had any traumatic experiences in life that leaves their self esteem damaged.

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Based on this you should prepare an oral presentation on 3-5 minutes. 

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Based on this you should prepare an oral presentation on 3-5 minutes. 

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1) Brainstorm on different kinds of punishment you can think of in terms of crime.

2) Join a group and continue the brainstorm with arguments pro and contra each kind of punishment.

3) Prepare an oral presentation, which you should present in front of the class by the end of the double lesson.

4) Make sure to write down the arguments of your own group as well as the arguments presented by the other groups.

Translation for basic level students is available below.

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1) Watch the mini documentary "Inside America´s Capital Punishment Crisis". Make sure to take notes on the viewpoints and on the methods of execution.

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Inside America's Capital Punishment Crisis (2014)

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Dangling on Death Row (2014): One in ten death row inmates are innocent. In Arizona and Texas, the execution capital of America, we hear from two inmates who have spent years awaiting the lethal injection for crimes they deny committing. For similar stories, see: Is The United State's Capital Punishment System Equal?

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2)  Join your group and prepare an oral presentation on 5 minutes based on the work description assigned to your group.

Group assignments
See attached.

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If time permits this video will be shown in class:

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30-Year Death Row Inmate Celebrates First Days of Freedom

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Anthony Ray Hinton learns to re-adjust to a new life in a world with computers and social media.

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If time permits this video will be shown in class:

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man in prison for 17 years set free after his lookalike is found

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Man in prison for 17 years set free after his lookalike is found | ABC News

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Richard Jones had been charged with aggravated robbery in Kansas City, Kansas, nearly 20 years ago. -- SUBSCRIBE to ABC NEWS: https://www.youtube.com/ABCNews/ Watch More on http://abcnews.go.com/ LIKE ABC News on FACEBOOK https://www.facebook.com/abcnews FOLLOW ABC News on TWITTER: https://twitter.com/abc GOOD MORNING AMERICA'S HOMEPAGE: https://gma.yahoo.com/