Some people think certain prisoners should be made to do unpaid community work instead of being put behind bars. To what extent do you agree or disagree?
Sample Response
Punishment for a crime is meant to discipline offenders while also isolating them from society by taking away their freedom and giving them a chance to rehabilitatehabilitate during prison time. Some people opine that such punishment is brutal and should be more lenient, like assigning community serviceawarding community work to minor offenders. I disagree with this view because jail time is given only after a proper investigation is conductedmade, and lenientlight punishments for crimes can not be effective in curbing crimes in many countries.
Our judicial system operatesworks systematically and considers the intent behind a crimethe intent of committing a crime. Thus a drunk driver who crosses the speed limit and someone who does so to reach a hospital to treat an ill elderly personan ill elderly are not treated equally. Minor offendersAnd light offenders are always given a chance to defend themselves. They are often just finedfined an amount of money rather than putbeing behind bars. Since we already have a system to punish serious offenders and merely reprimand minor offendersjust reprimand light offenders, we do not need to assign community service to certain offendersaward community work to certain criminals.
Moreover, community work, as an outcome of a crime, fails to rehabilitate a convict mainly because such work issuch works are too light to make the offender regret his or her actions. Prisons are intended to reform peopleThe jails are made to reform someone when that person is considered a threat to society. And if they are not isolated, properly counselled, and given the time to repent, they will probably commit even more serious crimescommit even bigger crimes in the future. For instance, according to a recent study, almost 30% of juveniles who are just given community or voluntary work for their minor offences often end up committing bigger crimes within a year.
To conclude, our law and judicial system consider the intent and circumstances of a crime and imposeaward punishments accordingly. So we do not need community work for crimes because this approach fails to achieve the main objectivelacks the main objective of rehabilitating criminals.
Why this response received Band 7.0
The response maintains a clear disagreement and develops two relevant lines of reasoning, supported by a concrete illustration of reoffending. Some claims about how judicial systems treat minor offenders are overgeneralised, and the argument does not fully examine when community service might be appropriate. Strengthen the case by qualifying these assumptions and directly comparing imprisonment with community work for clearly defined categories of prisoner.
IELTS Writing Criteria Scores
Task Response
The response directly addresses the proposition, sustains a clear position, and develops relevant reasons, though several claims are broad or insufficiently qualified.
Define which prisoners the argument concerns and compare the rehabilitative value of prison and community work more explicitly.
Coherence and Cohesion
Ideas are logically sequenced in clear paragraphs, and cohesive devices generally guide the reader smoothly despite some repetitive sentence openings.
Vary transitions and make the relationship between the first body paragraph's judicial-process claims and the central comparison more explicit.
Lexical Resource
A sufficiently varied vocabulary conveys the argument clearly, with occasional awkward choices and collocations such as references to awarding community work and light offenders.
Replace imprecise legal collocations with natural terms such as sentencing offenders to community service and people convicted of minor offences.
Grammatical Range and Accuracy
The response uses varied complex structures with generally good control, although occasional article, agreement, pronoun, and countability errors occur.
Proofread noun phrases and references carefully, especially expressions such as an elderly person, community work, and plural subjects.
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IELTS Writing Task 2
Some people think certain prisoners should be made to do unpaid community work instead of being put behind bars. To what extent do you agree or disagree?
Your response
Write the task yourself, then compare your choices with the annotated response.