Writing Feedback / [IELTS TASK 2] Fixed or Flexible punishments for crimes. [4]

Question:
Some people believe that there should be fixed punishments for each type of crime. Others, however, argue that the circumstances of an individual crime, and the motivation for committing it, should always be taken into account when deciding on the punishment.

Discuss both these views and give your own opinion.

My answer:

There is an obvious statement that criminals must be punished. However, the question about the method of deciding the punishment has raised two different opinions. The first one is that each type of crime has its own unchanged punishment; while the other one takes into account the situations and the reasons of the crime. I will analyze these two ideas and give my opinion.

For the first solution, there is a list of crimes and a list of corresponding punishments. If one person commits a crime, it will be simple to find the consequence of that action. For example, if a man killed a woman, according to this opinion, it is inevitable that there is death punishment for that man. However, because of its simplicity, this death punishment might be not accurate if that man had chronically mental illness and he could not control his action. Consequently, this simple solutions has its own flaws and should be modified.

On the other hand, the second solution considers additional factors of a crime such as the situations and the motivation of an individual crime to conclude the extent of the retribution. As in the previous example, it depends on the way and the reason the man killed his victim, the punishment on him can become more serious or less. For instance, if he did not deliberately killed her, in other words, he killed her by accident, the punishment should be lessened. Because of accuracy, this solution requires more efforts on investigation and is more complicated than the first approach.

In summary, the two opinions have their own advantages and disadvantages. For the sake of justice, my own opinion is that the second argument is more appropriate and accurate than the other one.