Criminal records, British and Australia laws - IELTS Essay

Dear all,

Can someone please help me with my essay below? Any advise or suggests will really help! Thanks in advance!

Question: Under British and Australia laws a jury in a criminal case has no access to information about the defendant's past criminal record. This protects the person who is being accused of the crime.

Some lawyers have suggested that this practice should be changed and that a jury should be given all the past facts before they reach their decision about the case.

Do you agree or disagree? Give reasons for your answer.

My answer (298 words, minimum requirement 250)

Many countries have offered their juries full knowledge of the defendant's past criminal records before a trial starts. But under British and Australia law, it is forbidden to give a jury the defendant's past criminal records. Some lawyers have argued that this information should be provided to the juries before a verdict has been reached. There are several factors to be considered in order to determine if such restriction implemented by the British and Australian government is appropriate.

One consequence of offering juries the information to the defendant's criminal background is overloading the juries with information. Very often, juries are not trained professionals who determine where the rest of the defendant's life should be spent. They are not equipped with the knowledge to sort out a huge amount of information thrown upon them. This is why it is extremely important to only inform the juries on what is important.

Another reason to prohibit such action is to prevent the defendant from being judged two times for a same crime. If the law states that a person cannot be judged two times for the same crime, then why offered the irrelevant information to the juries? If the defendant is found innocent, then he is by law, not guilty. If the defendant is found guilty, then the court will deliver his punishments, and therefore, he has paid his dues.

We should only provide the information necessary for the juries to make the correct decision. Very often lawyers will like to play the mind game and if we allow the juries to have knowledge of the defendant's past criminal records, it will only allow the mind games to be played at a catastrophic level. The law should aide the juries to make the correct decision, not create more burdens for them.

Your arguments aren't very strong, and you make no attempt to address any of the counter-arguments.


Really? A single sentence added to the trial, say, "The defendant has been convicted of rape three times before," is going to overwhelm the jury?


This is an argument against trial by jury, not against releasing criminal records of defendants.


This is a somewhat stronger argument, and the main reason for the current policies. The idea is that a person should be found guilty or innocent based on the facts of the case, not on past history that may be irrelevant to the case. However, you need to deal in some way with the obvious counterargument, which is that past behavior is the surest predictor of future behavior, and that a person's propensity to commit crimes is in fact relevant in assessing his likely guilt.

Hey Sean,

Thanks a lot for the tips! I'll be sure to work on that.

Do you think it's also possible to let me know the grammatical mistakes made here?

Thanks again!

I'm going to disagree with Sean. If you were preparing for a debate, then you would have to think about the points he raised. For an IELTS essay, where the goal is to demonstrate proficiency in English by writing a coherent essay, you need only come up with two or three reasonable arguments for your position, which you did here.

Actually, my point was that only your last argument is particularly reasonable. Your first body paragraph doesn't seem that coherent or on-topic. I guess you could avoid dealing with the counterarguments to the points you make in your second body paragraph, though, if you are only concerned with English proficiency.

Thanks guys, thanks for the tips. Yes, I understand my first argument is a bit weak, couldn't think of anything good. I'll work on that. But as to the English proficiency part, anything wrong with the grammar?

You use a lot of wordy passive constructions. Were you to revise to eliminate these, your essay would be much nicer to read.

Hey Sean,

Sorry, I'm gonna ask something that's going to sound stupid. What do you mean by "wordy passive constructions?" Can yo please give me an example and how I can fix it? Thanks!

Passive constructions use the object of an action as the sentence's grammatical subject, as oppose to the active voice, which uses the actor itself as the subject. So

Active: I opened the door
Passive: The door was opened (by me).

The passive voice is generally wordier and less interesting than the active voice.


British and Australian law forbids prosecutors revealing the defendants' criminal record to the jury


One must consider several factors to determine when such restrictions are appropriate.

And so on. Phrases such as "it is" and "there are" are especially weak.