The United States of America. Crime and Punishment

Crime and Punishment

About 90% of all crimes are dealt with by magistrates’ courts. Sentences vary a lot but most people who are found guilty have to pay a fine. Magistrates’ courts can impose fines of up to 2,000 pounds or prison sentences of up to six months. If the punishment is to be more severe the case must go to a Crown Court. The most severe punishment is life imprisonment: there has been no death penalty in Britain since 1965.

The level of recorded crime and the number of people sent to prison both increased during the 1970s and 1980s. By the end of that period the average prison population was more than 50,000 and new prisons had to be built as overcrowding had become a serious problem. By 1988 the cost of keeping someone in prison was over 250 pound per week, which was more than the national average wage.

Physical Geography

The country naturally presents a tremendous variety in physical features (and climate), ranging from moist forest to arid desert and bald mountain peaks. Mount McKinley in Alaska at 20,320 feet (6,194 meters) is the highest point in the United States, while part of Death Valley in California is 282 feet (89 meters) below sea level.

The eastern coast of the United States is a long, gently rolling lowland area known as the coastal plains. These coastal plains, which stretch from Maine to Texas, are very flat (nowhere in Florida is more than 350 feet above sea level, for example) and often swampy. In general the soil is very poor, except in the fertile southern part, where the plain reaches many miles inland (the Cotton Belt of the Old South and the citrus country of central Florida).

At the western edge of the Atlantic coastal plain, there is a chain of low, almost unbroken mountains, stretching from the northern part of Maine southwest into Alabama, called the Appalachian Mountains. The mountains contain enormous quantities of easily accessible coal and iron (which helps explain the huge concentration of heavy industry along the lower region of the Great Lakes). The Priedmont hills, to the east of the main peaks, are the most highly productive agricultural land in the country after the Midwest.

The heart of the United States is a vast plain, broken by the Superior Upland and Black Hills in the north and the Ozark Plateau in the south, which extends from central Canada southwards to Mexico and from the Appalachian Mountains westwards to the Cordillera. These interior plains, which rise gradually like a saucer to higher land on all sides, are divided into two parts: the wetter, eastern portion is called the Central Plains and the western portion the Great Plains, both of which have good soils.

To the west of the Great Plains is the Cordillera, which accounts for one-third of the USA. It is a region of tremendous variety, which can be sub-divided into various other regions. On its eastern border the Rocky Mountains, a high, discontinuous chain of mountains stretching from mountainous Alaska down to Mexico, rise sharply from the Great Plains. These rugged mountains contain many important metals such as lead, uranium and gold.

The western edge of the Cordillera is characterised by a coastal chain of high mountains, among which there are broad, fertile valleys. The most important ranges are the Sierra Nevada and the Cascades in the eastern part and the Coastal Ranges along the western coast. There is no Pacific coastal plain and between these two sets of mountains there is a large plateau region, with steep cliffs and canyons, basins and isolated ranges. Many basins are rich in resources such as oil and natural gas.

Hawaii is a chain of twenty islands, only seven of which are inhabited. The mountainous islands were formed by volcanic activity and there are still a number of active volcanoes.

The United States has several immensely long rivers. There are a large number of rivers in the eastern part of nation, the longest of which is the Missouri (3,942 km), a tributary of the Mississippi (3,760 km); the Mississippi-Missouri-Red Rock system extends for 6,176 km before entering the Gulf of Mexico near New Orleans. Two other tributaries of the Mississippi – the Ohio and Tennessee – are more than 1,250 km long. In the West the Rio Grande, which forms part of the United States-Mexico border, flows for 3,016 km and only the Colorado (2,320 km), Columbia (2,240 km) and the San Joaquim-Sacramento river systems reach the Pacific.

Дата добавления: 2015-01-03