Without capital punishment (the death penalty) our lives are less secure and crimes of violence increase. Capital punishment is essential to control violence in society. To what extent do you agree or disagree with this opinion?
Sample Response
Different countries have different constitutions and they follow different rules and regulations to deal with crimecrimes. Some nations are quite rigid in dealing with particular crimessome particular crimes and they follow retributive principles such asfollow law and order like a tooth for a tooth and an eye for an eyetooth for a tooth and eye for an eye. Some people claim that the death penalty oughtdeath penalty ought to be imposed on criminalsgiven to criminals to protect society from violent crimeprotect our society from savagery. To a certain extent, I agree with this opinion.
To begin with, capital punishment is a good way to prevent heinous crimes such as drug dealingcrimes like drug dealing, murder and rape in a society. Knowledge of such a stern sentencesuch stern sentence can deter potential offendersgenerate fear among offenders. Thus, people will think twice before committing a crime even if the situation compels them to do so. As a result, the number of criminal activitywrongful activities will dramatically decline. In addition to this, a sociopathicsociopath killer or a rapist destroys a whole family and the government should punish such perpetrators to protectprevent innocent people. To maintain the order in societyequilibrium in a society, penalties for inexcusable offences should have the same severity asof the crime, sometimes death penalty. However, the death penalty violates human rightsdeath penalty stands against the human rights, according to many. All living creaturesAll the living creatures have the right to live and should get a second chance - criminals or not. Societies use the legallegislative system to prosecute a criminal and the verdict cannot always be one hundred percent faircannot be hundred percent fair always. To prevent any wrongdoing from the law itself, the criminal can be given solitary confinement and long prison sentences. In conclusion, even though capital punishment helpshelp reduce crime rates in our society and it is required to prevent harsh offences, the death penalty is a violation of human rights. So, I feel that capital punishments should be given in heinous crimes after being absolutely sure.
Why this response received Band 6.5
The response takes a qualified position and considers both deterrence and human-rights concerns, using relevant ideas such as judicial error and alternative imprisonment. Its main limitation is that several claims remain asserted rather than convincingly supported, while the body and conclusion are compressed into one long paragraph. The highest-priority improvement is to separate the opposing perspectives clearly and explain the conditions under which capital punishment could be justified.
IELTS Writing Criteria Scores
Task Response
A clear partial-agreement position is supported by relevant arguments about deterrence, proportional punishment, human rights, and judicial error, although some reasoning is general.
Explain with greater precision why deterrence would work and define the exceptional circumstances that make execution acceptable despite the risk of error.
Coherence and Cohesion
The ideas move logically from support for capital punishment to objections and a qualified conclusion, but most of the discussion is presented in one dense paragraph.
Separate the case for deterrence, the human-rights counterargument, and the final qualification into distinct paragraphs.
Lexical Resource
The response uses a reasonably broad range of crime-and-justice vocabulary, but recurrent collocational errors reduce precision and naturalness.
Use accurate combinations such as 'protect innocent people,' 'proportionate to the crime,' and 'impose the death penalty'.
Grammatical Range and Accuracy
A variety of sentence structures conveys the argument clearly overall, though errors with articles, agreement, and word order occur repeatedly.
Check article use with 'the death penalty' and correct agreement in clauses such as 'capital punishment helps reduce crime'.
Write this task while it is fresh
Try the same task now. It helps you remember the feedback and write better next time.
IELTS Writing Task 2
Without capital punishment (the death penalty) our lives are less secure and crimes of violence increase. Capital punishment is essential to control violence in society. To what extent do you agree or disagree with this opinion?
Your response
Write the task yourself, then compare your choices with the annotated response.