Young people who commit crimes should be treated the same way as adults. To what extent do you agree or disagree?
Sample Response
Whether adolescents should be punished for their crimes in the way adults are has become widely debatedhas gained traction. From my point of view, imposing similar punishments for both young and adultmatured offenders will have a negative impact.
On the one hand, advocates of equal treatment for underageunderaged and adult lawbreakers have grounds to believe that this approach can have positive outcomesthis notion can have positive results. First, more young people would commit crimesmore young criminals would emerge if they are pardoned for their wrongdoings due to their age. Some punishmentsretributions are too lenient given the seriousnesstoo light for the seriousness of the felonies committed, and therefore cannothence, cannot deter youngsters from breaking the law. Moreover, giving young offenders lighter sentences is unjust for the victims and their families, as some felonies are too vile for punishments such as being sent to prison. One case in point is in Vietnam, 2017, a robber killed a family of 4, including the parents and their young children. Usually, this man would have been sentenced to death, yet he only wasgot sentenced to 18 years in prison. The fact that he escaped just punishment because he was a few months below the legal agea few months underaged angered the public for an extended period of time.
On the other hand, I strongly believe that juvenile delinquents should not receive punishments similar to those given to adultsretributions similar to that for adults. To start with, children do not have the same moral maturity or understanding of the world as adultsthe moral capacity and thorough understanding of the world as grown-ups. Therefore, they cannot fully comprehend the weight of their wrongdoing or the sentences imposed on themwrongdoings or even the sentences. Some young offenders commit crimes without knowing that it is an offense. Thus, giving these criminals leeway and an opportunity to rehabilitate and contributecontributing to society is more humane. Furthermore, adolescents are easily affected by different factors, compared with adultsas compared to adults. Grown-ups have the ability to stop themselves but younger peopleones, once instigated, may act on impulse and cause regrets.
To conclude, while it is undeniable that inflicting fitting penalties for criminals is important forto upholding society’s stability and values, I am of the opinion that young lawbreakers should be tried differently in court from adult offenders.
Why this response received Band 7.0
The essay offers a clear, consistent position and develops both the deterrence argument and the case for treating juveniles differently, using a concrete example effectively. Its main limitation is recurring imprecision in word choice and several awkward grammatical constructions, particularly in the second body paragraph. The highest-priority improvement is to express the rehabilitation argument with cleaner sentence structure and more natural legal vocabulary.
IELTS Writing Criteria Scores
Task Response
The response addresses the question fully, sustains a clear disagreement, and supports both perspectives with relevant reasoning.
Explain more precisely how reduced culpability should translate into different sentencing or rehabilitation policies.
Coherence and Cohesion
The argument follows a clear progression, with well-defined opposing viewpoints and an appropriate conclusion.
Strengthen internal flow by making each consequence follow explicitly from the reason that precedes it.
Lexical Resource
Vocabulary is varied and topic-specific, with generally effective control despite several unnatural or imprecise choices.
Use more idiomatic terms such as juvenile offenders, penalties, and rehabilitation instead of underaged, retributions, and cause regrets.
Grammatical Range and Accuracy
The essay uses a good range of complex forms, but noticeable errors occur in parallelism, comparison, punctuation, and preposition choice.
Edit sentence boundaries and parallel verb forms, especially in the example sentence and the rehabilitation sentence.
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IELTS Writing Task 2
Young people who commit crimes should be treated the same way as adults. To what extent do you agree or disagree?
Your response
Write the task yourself, then compare your choices with the annotated response.