IDEAS FOR IELTS + NEC WRITING

CRIME AND PUNISHMENT

1. ULTIMATE QUESTION: NATURE OR NURTURE
- Whether criminal behavior is a product of human nature or nurture has been an enduring
question among many criminologists, and a debate that continues to perplex many theorists and
researchers today.
- Early biological theories of crime were strongly influenced by Darwinian views of inheritance
and natural selection and tended to ignore or downplay environmental influences.
- The advent of sociology, however, challenged those dominant explanations. Various sociological
views of crime became widely accepted among scholars as biological theories fell out of favor.
- Unlike early biological theories of crime, the new biosocial criminology seeks to understand the
various ways biological and environmental variables work together to cause problem behavior.
- Nonetheless, tension between those who view crime as the product of “nature” and those who
favor “nurture” remains
- As the evidence linking both social and biological risk factors to criminal behavior constantly
grows, it is becoming more difficult for any theory to ignore the influence of either biology or
sociology entirely/altogether
- Another expression: Given the growing evidence that both biology and environmental factors
contribute to the commission of criminal behavior, …
- Supporting ideas for nature:
+ While genes certainly do not cause any behavior, they do produce the traits and tendencies
which lead individuals to respond to their environment in one way and not another
+ Researchers have pointed out a higher concordance in criminal behavior among identical
versus fraternal twins, justifying the role of heredity in causing behavioral disorders/
predisposing a given individual to crime
+ Studies have also shown that there are some structural and chemical differences in the brains
of lawbreakers when compared to the brains of law-abiding individuals.
+ Specific “candidate” genes that contribute to causes of behavior: MAOA
+ Nature theories assert that the etiology (causation of a disease) of criminal behavior is
biologically based in genetic inheritance and the structure and functions of people’s brains and
other psychological responses.
+ It is possible that would-be offenders carried a gene that might predispose them to an
addictive personality, and once exposed to a situation, they are easily led to criminal thinking
and potentially deviant behavior.
- Supporting ideas for nurture:
+ Both deviant and conforming behavior are developed through an individual's learning
processes, with the decisive factor being the direction and influences on the individual's
behavior.
+ Such morals, values and beliefs adopted from early childhood years form a system that
facilitates decision making throughout the course of an individuals’ life.
 + One’s upbringing and social learning environment directly contribute to an individual’s specific
criminogenic needs.
+ One of the best examples of a criminogenic need that ties into the social learning environment
would be criminal peers. Oftentimes, a young impressionable adult will elect to participate in
delinquent behavior simply to fit in with their peers.
+ Other factors that can be directly linked to the social environment would include child abuse,
domestic violence and exposure to emotional harm. Criminals resort to vandalism,
deceitfulness, rule violation as a means of releasing their aggression and concealing their
insecurity.
- Rather than positing that one's biology is a direct determinant of criminal behavior, biosocial
criminology suggests that biology is more of a susceptibility that may be enhanced or negated
depending on different environmental factors.
- A comprehensive review of biosocial research analyzed results of 39 studies ranging from areas
including genetics, obstetrics, neurology, hormones, brain imaging, environmental toxins,
neuropsychology, neurotransmitters, and psychophysiology, and found that these factors are
equally as important to the development of criminal activity as sociological and environmental
factors.
- Therefore, it stands to reason that by adding biological concepts into social-based mainstream
criminological theories, an increase in explanatory power and better understanding of criminal
behavior will occur, which in turn paves the way for effective crime deterrent methods.

SOLUTIONS: (misbehavior = misconduct)

 Situation
- Psychopathic traits have been consistently linked to more serious and persistent patterns of
conduct problems and aggression, later antisocial behavior and delinquency, lower levels of
social competence and prosocial behavior, and even to adult psychopathy
 Approaches
- “The earlier the better” is a key theme in establishing interventions to prevent child
delinquency, whether these interventions focus on the individual child, the home and family, or
the school and community.
- Families should also be provided with access to mental health and other related services for the
early detection of psychopathic conducts.
- One of the immediate benefits of recreational activities is that they fill unsupervised after-school
hours. Therefore, by incorporating effective extracurricular programs for children such as the
organization of sports clubs, children are less inclined to engage in illegal activities while forming
new relationships with like-minded peers.
- Parents should also enhance their parenting skills by actively partaking in parent-child
integration training programs or acquiring in-dept understanding about their children’s
problems. These, therefore, allow for appropriate response to children’s behavior, whether
positive and negative.
2. CAPITAL PUNISHMENT
- The application of the death penalty appears to be confined to an ever-narrowing minority of
countries
- Punishment is usually understood as a paradigm of retributivism, and retributivism has for a
long time been thought to be an especially promising source of a rationale in favor of death
penalty.
 Abolitionists’ perspective
- Capital punishment denies due process of law: Capital punishment reflects arbitrariness, in the
form of random or invidious infliction of the ultimate penalty. Its imposition is often arbitrary,
and always irrevocable – forever depriving an individual of the opportunity to benefit from new
evidence or new laws that might warrant the reversal of a conviction. This also means that the
wrongdoers are completely deprived of a chance for rehabilitation.
- Capital punishment is cruel and unusual: Capital punishment is an intolerable denial of civil
liberties and is inconsistent with the fundamental values of our democratic system. The death
penalty is uncivilized in theory and unfair and inequitable in practice. It is a relic of the earliest
days of penology, when slavery, branding, and other corporal punishments were commonplace.
Like those barbaric practices, executions have no place in a civilized society.
- Capital punishment violates the constitutional guarantee of equal protection: For example, the
death penalty system in the US is applied in an unfair and unjust manner against people, largely
dependent on how much money they have, the skill of their attorneys, race of the victim and
where the crime took place. People of color are far more likely to be executed than white
people, especially if the victim is white.
- Capital punishment is not a viable form of crime control: The death penalty is a waste of
taxpayer funds and has no public safety benefit. Instead, increasing the number of police
officers, reducing drug abuse, and creating a better economy with more jobs higher than the
death penalty seem to be have better deterrent effects.
- Capital punishment wastes limited resources: It squanders the time and energy of courts,
prosecuting attorneys, defense counsel, juries, and courtroom and law enforcement personnel.
It unduly burdens the criminal justice system, and it is thus counterproductive as an instrument
for society's control of violent crime.
- Refutation for defenders: The deterrent impact of capital punishment is most often cited in
support of capital punishment, claiming that the threat of execution influences criminal
behavior more effectively than imprisonment does. Yet, this argument is somewhat flawed and
highly suspect. Persons who commit murder and other crimes of personal violence often do not
premeditate their crimes. Most capital crimes are committed during moments of great
emotional stress or under the influence of drugs or alcohol, when logical thinking has been
suspended. Even when crime is planned, the criminal ordinarily concentrates on escaping
detection, arrest, and conviction. The threat of even the severest punishment will not
discourage those who expect to escape detection and arrest.

 Defenders’ perspective
 (Two groups: retributivists and welfarists or consequentialists)
- For retributivists, they claim that for the most heinous forms of wrongdoing, the penalty of death is
morally justified or perhaps even required. Retribution has its basis in religious values, which have
historically maintained that it is proper to take an "eye for an eye" and a life for a life. Although the
victim and the victim's family cannot be restored to the status which preceded the murder, at least
an execution brings closure to the murderer's crime and ensures that the murderer will create no
more victims.
 Rebuttal for this:
+ The emotional impulse for revenge is not a sufficient justification for invoking a system of
capital punishment, with all its accompanying problems and risks.
+ The notion of an eye for an eye, or a life for a life, is an overly simplistic one which a civilized
society has never endorsed as humans do not allow torturing the torturer, or raping the rapist.
- Welfarists, on the other hand, contend that the deterrent effect of capital punishment is significant
and that it justifies the infliction of the ultimate penalty.
Consequentialist defenses of capital punishment, however, tend to assume that capital punishment
is (merely) morally permissible, as opposed to being morally obligatory. In their line of reasoning, the
death penalty seems morally obligatory if it is the only or most effective means of preventing
significant numbers of murders.

3. REHABLIBITATION
 Definition:
- The term “rehabilitation” itself simply means the process of helping a person to readapt to
society or to restore someone to a former position or rank. However, this concept has taken on
many different meanings over the years and waxed and waned in popularity as a principle of
sentencing or justification for punishment, regarding its putative failure to treat ofenders as
moral agents responsible for their conduct
- The nature and purpose of rehabilitation programs vary according to type of offence and the
offender’s perceived needs, but include education, vocational training, psychological/behavioral
interventions, and interventions addressing offenders’ addiction problems.
 Abolitionists’ perspective
- Abolitionist literature notes that prisons at best do nothing to reform offenders and at worst
play a central role in reproducing crime. From a radical point of view, rehabilitation is seen as an
attempt by those in power to impose a repressive system of social control over vulnerable
individuals.
- The purpose of punishment is to show disapproval for offender’s wrongdoing, while
condemning his/her criminal actions. In other words, Punishment is offered as a retribution
rather than aiding an individual change for the better
- Punishment is signified as a censure of that offending conduct, allowing the criminal justice
system to show society that it takes its own rules seriously and that a breach of these rules
ultimately has drastic consequences
 Proponents’ perspective
- By seeking to reduce crime by reducing reoffending, rehabilitation constructively reduces public
nuisance and shields other members of the society against similar crimes
 - The role of the criminal justice system does not end with pronouncing sentences, for there is
need to understand what will happen to offenders while serving their time in prison. There is
need to help these individuals to change and adopt desired behaviors through learning
meaningful skills training, with appropriate behavioral-treatment programs that help them to
understand how their actions impact other people within the society
- Rehabilitating offenders while in prison offers them wider opportunities to build on their
character through the adoption of appropriate behaviors that will help them in absconding from
future criminal offences
- With the proper training in the rehabilitation program, there is reassurance they can have a
change in their actions and feel remorse for what they have done. Giving the ex-offender the
opportunity to prove themselves in the community makes them have a sense of self-trust and
pride to both the employer and themself.
- As a guide to the sentencing decisions made by judges, rehabilitation as the ultimate goal avails
the most flexible and sensible direction of administering appropriate justice within the criminal
justice system. With rehabilitation as a guide, sentences can give judgment based on the level of
offences committed by an individual as a form of deterrence. Therefore, penitent (regretful)
offenders, offenders how have learnt from their mistakes (or self-rehabilitated offenders) have
the chance to receive lighter sentences that will help in building their behavior and character
within the society
- It is through rehabilitation that the chances of an offender being integrated and accepted back
into the society is made possible since it is a testimony that the offenders’ behavior can still be
shaped and molded into the right behavior that is acceptable within the society

ARTS/MUSIC
1. LEARNING A MUSICAL INSTRUMENT
- Perceptual and language skills: Music has long been argued to provide effective experiences for
children to develop listening skills in mainstream schools and those for children with learning
difficulties. Musical training sharpens the brain’s early encoding of sound leading to enhance
performance, improving the ability to distinguish between rapidly changing sounds and
enhancing auditory discrimination. This has an impact on the cortical processing of linguistic
pitch patterns
- Social skills: Reported pride in being an active contributor to a group outcome, developing a
strong sense of belonging, gaining popularity and making friends with ‘like-minded’ people,
enhancement of social skills, and the development of a strong sense of self-esteem and
satisfaction. enhanced personal skills facilitating the students’ personal identity and encouraging
the development of self-achievement, self-confidence and intrinsic motivation
- Well-being: The benefits include: physical relaxation and release of physical tension; emotional
release and reduction of feelings of stress; a sense of happiness, positive mood, joy, elation, and
feeling high; a sense of greater personal, emotional and physical well-being; an increased sense
of arousal and energy; stimulation of cognitive capacities – attention, concentration, memory
and learning; an increased sense of self-confidence and self-esteem; a sense of therapeutic
benefit in relation to long-standing psychological and social problems; a sense of exercising
systems of the body through the physical exertion involved, especially the lungs; a sense of
 disciplining the skeletal-muscular system through the adoption of good posture; being engaged
in a valued , meaningful worthwhile activity that gives a sense of purpose and motivation

2.

CONSTRUCTIVE FEEDBACK
I. Benefits
1. It helps learners evaluate their own performance
- Preceptor feedback serves as a mirror in which learners can see what they do well and what
they need to improve.
- It helps learners understand preceptors’ expectations and whether they are meeting those
expectations
2. A system of regular feedback encourages learners to try new skills
- They can challenge themselves, experiment with new skills, and receive guidance that helps
them develop mastery before being graded.
3. Feedback makes preceptors’ work easier
- It provides an opportunity for the preceptor be proactive in identifying and addressing
potential problem learning situations.
- Feedback makes the evaluation process easier, because the learner already knows the
preceptor’s assessment of his or her performance by the time they discuss the evaluation