IELTS writing task 2 essay - Prisons vs Education

Question: Prison is the common way in most countries to solve the problem of crime. However, a more effective solution is to provide people with a better education. Agree or disagree?

Essay:

While incarceration has become the usual approach in many nations to combat crime, I believe that providing citizens with a better education is a more sensible and cost-effective solution in the long run.

To begin with, from my perspective, improving education can help to tackle the root cause of crime – poverty – thus reducing crime rates in the long term. As a matter of fact, people who went through proper training and possess high educational attainments tend to be more well-equipped with the today’s job market, hence, they are less likely to be unemployed and commit crime due to financial difficulties. In contrast, although prisons are an important option for punishing criminals and keeping them off the street, imprisonment often fails to deter future crime. Various studies have found that prisons themselves may be schools for learning to commit more serious crimes. This is likely to happen when less severe offenders are locked up with violent criminals; the more dangerous convicts can guide the less experienced how to break the laws or even recruit them for future illegal activities. As a result, hardly does imprisonment act as a sustainable deterrent to future offending.

Besides, in the fight against crime, building a better education system for all is a wiser investment than maintaining a large population of prisoners. While prisons cost millions of dollars to run, schools and universities can produce highly skilled workers, engineers, scientists, doctors and other professionals who are able to contribute to the economy and pay taxes. Furthermore, people who have a job are less likely require monetary support and social benefits from the state, and therefore reducing financial burden on the government.

In conclusion, because of the deterrent effect of employment and the cost consideration, I am convinced that focusing on providing a better education for citizens is a more effective way to solve the crime problem than relying on prison sentences.