DESCRIPTIVE WRITING
The Thunderstorm
I watched a thunderstorm, far out over the sea. It began quietly,
and with nothing visible except tall dark clouds and a rolling tide.
There was just a soft murmur of thunder as I watched the horizon
from my balcony. Over the next few minutes, the clouds closed
and reflected lightning set the rippling ocean aglow.
The thunderheads had covered up the sun, shadowing the vista. It
was peaceful for a long time.
I was looking up when the first clear thunderbolt struck. It blazed
against the sky and sea; I could see its shape in perfect reverse
colors when I blinked. More followed. The thunder rumbled and
stuttered as if it could hardly keep up. There were openings in the
cloud now, as if the sky were torn, and spots of brilliant blue
shone above the shadowed sea.
I looked down then, watching the waves. Every bolt was answered
by a moment of spreading light on the surface. The waves were
getting rough, rising high and crashing hard enough that I could
hear them.
Then came the rain. It came all at once and in sheets, soaking the
sand, filling the sea. It was so dense I could only see the lightning
as flashes of light. It came down so hard the thunder was
drowned. Everything was rhythmic light and shadow, noise and
silence, blending into a single experience of all five senses.
In an instant it stopped. The storm broke. The clouds came apart
like curtains. The rain still fell, but softly now. It was as if there had
never been a storm at all, except for a single signature. A rainbow,
almost violently bright, spread above and across the water. I could
see the horizon again.
Reference: N.A. ( https://examples.yourdictionary.com/descriptive-essay-
examples.html#:~:text=I%20watched%20a,the%20horizon%20again.)
ANALYTICAL WRITING
Just Confessions
Saul Kassin and Gisli Gudjonsson, in their article for Scientific American
Mind, “True Crimes, False Confessions,” argue that “society should
discuss the urgent need to reform practices that contribute to false
confessions and to require mandatory videotaping of all interviews and
interrogations” (2005, p. 26). After analyzing their argument, I shall
argue that, although one might object that Kassin and Gudjonsson focus
too heavily on the importance of protecting criminal suspects, they
provide a compelling argument that social justice requires such reforms
as mandatory video-tapping of police interrogations.
In developing their case for the need to reform interrogation tactics,
Kassin and Gudjonsson survey a number of studies regarding the role of
confessions in criminal investigations. For example, they are at pains to
provide evidence that interrogations are often influenced by a bias on
the part of the interrogator. Further concern is found in the fact that
Miranda rights, as found in the American legal system, are insufficient
safeguards, given that suspects, especially innocent ones, often waive
those rights. Finally, Kassin and Gudjonsson note that aggressive
interrogation tactics can often produce false confessions.
What makes these findings most troubling, according to Kassin and
Gudjonsson, is the strong correlation between false confession and
wrongful conviction. Trial jurors, we are told, are inclined to give
disproportionate weight to a confessions, even taking it to outweigh so-
called “hard evidence.” As a characteristic example, Kassin and
Gudjonsson cite the case of Bruce Godschalk. Even when DNA evidence
proved Godschalk could not have been the rapist, the District Attorney of
the case refused to release him from prison, stating that “…I trust my
detective and his tape-recorded evidence” (Kassin and Gudjonsson,
2005, p. 28). Because of this tendency on the part of jurors and
prosecutors, together with the facts listed above regarding the potential
for unrestricted interrogations to elicit false confessions, Kassin and
Gudjonsson argue for the need to reform police interrogation tactics.
Underlying their argument is the implicit moral principle that social
justice requires that we do everything we can to minimize the potential
to wrongly convict innocent persons. This may seem obvious, but one
could reasonably question whether it puts too much emphasis on
protecting potentially innocent suspects and not enough on convicting
potentially guilty criminals. In a perfectly just system, criminals would
always be brought to justice and treated appropriately, and innocent
suspects would always be exonerate. However, any system devised and
implemented by humans must deal with the reality of imperfection.
The difficult moral question we need to ask is how we are to balance
the needs of society to protect itself from criminals while at the same
time protecting the rights of innocent persons. We need to ask at what
cost we are willing to limit the ability of police and Crown prosecutors to
prosecute criminal suspects. Imagine, for example, the following two
systems: (1) Almost no innocent persons are ever convicted, but a very
high percentage of recidivist offenders are able to escape conviction, (2)
A very high percentage of offenders are caught and brought to justice;
however, a small but non-negligible percentage (say 3%) of innocent
persons are unjustly caught in the system and thus wrongly punished for
crimes they never committed. Neither of these is very palatable, but if
forced to choose, my intuitions favor result (2). Of course, there are
many variables at work here, and I do not have the space to delve into a
detailed discussion of all the relevant trade-offs. My basic point is that
social justice requires not only that we protect innocent individuals from
prosecution, but that we hold guilty persons accountable for their
actions.
While I think that this is a reasonable worry to raise given the tenor of
Kassin and Gudjonsson’s article, I do not think it ultimately undermines
their argument. That is, I think one might reasonably object that they
are overly focused on the possibility of false confessions without saying
much about the utility of true confessions. However, their specific
proposal that interrogations be video-taped does not seem to diminish
the ability of police to effectively interrogate suspects and, when
possible, to elicit a confession. Indeed, they conclude their essay by
citing a study showing that police largely found the practice of video-
taping to be quite useful and not to inhibit criminal investigations.
So, even if one thinks that Kassin and Gudjonsson are a bit one-side in
focusing on false confessions, ultimately I think these authors provide a
compelling argument for the need for such reforms as mandatory video-
taping of police interrogations.
References
(https://www.sfu.ca/~etiffany/teaching/phil120/
sample_paper_1061.html)
Kassin, Saul and Gudjonsson, Gisli (2005). “True Crimes, False
Confessions,” Scientific American Mind, July, pp. 24-31.
PERSUASIVE WRITING
We Should Not All Be Uniform!
Every day, millions of teenagers spend between six and eight hours in America’s high
schools. They sit at their desks, listen to their teachers, and do their school work. In some of
these schools, however, they are also forced to dress in school uniforms. This restriction is
really too much. In America’s high schools, students should not be forced to wear uniforms
because they take away a student’s sense of individuality, they do not allow for self-
expression, and they absolutely do not save families any money.
First of all, students should not wear uniforms because they take away a student’s sense of
individuality. Imagine this: 30 students sit in desks in a small classroom. Each student wears
tan pants and a white shirt. They sit with their school books and papers in front of them.
They all look exactly alike. Does this seem right? Of course not! We are all individuals! We
are unique in many different ways. Why try to make all students look alike? This idea is
supported by testimony from a 17-year-old student forced to wear uniforms. Her story was
reported in National Catholic Reporter of March, 2002, and she said, "Everyone hated it. It
completely killed any sense of individuality any one of us had. Everyone looked the same. It
was sad to watch" . Clearly, students with experience in wearing uniforms feel that they
take away a sense of individuality.
Next, school uniforms do not allow students to express themselves. Teenagers are at an age
where they are trying to establish their identity. Is it fair to prevent them from exploring
self-expression by making them wear uniforms? By taking away a student’s right to choose
what to wear, we also take away the opportunity to express oneself. For example, if a
young woman is very interested in becoming a fashion designer, she may begin to take
home economics classes and train herself to make clothes and create patterns. If that were
true, she would definitely want to wear her own creations to school; this would allow her to
show off her achievements and gauge her peers’ responses to her newly created clothes.
However, if she were a student who was forced to wear uniforms, she would not be able to
express herself in this manner. To take that right away from America’s youth is an injustice.
Finally, some schools tell parents that uniforms are a good idea because they save families
money. This is not necessarily true. It is logical to say that when teenagers come home from
school, they want to change out of the clothes that they were forced to wear to school.
Well, what are they going to change into? They will want clothes of their own choice, of
course. This means that parents would still have to provide their children with clothes that
fit current trends, plus they would have to buy a separate set of clothes for their children to
wear to school each day. While it is possible that some teenagers may not want designer
clothes in addition to their school uniforms, it is very unlikely. In conclusion, in our public
schools, students should not be forced to wear uniforms. This is because they take away a
student’s sense of individuality, they do not allow for self expression, and they do not save
families any money. There are already plenty of restrictions upon high school students, and
these rules and regulations are acceptable because they help maintain order on a daily
basis. However, mandating school uniforms would not be a helpful regulation. Uniforms
may seem like a good idea at first, but in the end they would do more harm than good.
Reference: N.A. (https://www.collegeessay.org/ )
CRITICAL WRITING
Outcomes of Literature Offenses Committed
There are a number of inherent methodological difficulties in
evaluating treatment efficacy in this area, and this has contributed
to controversy within the research literature surrounding treatment
outcomes for this group of offenders (Marshall, 1997). Firstly, while
there is no doubt that the primary criterion of treatment success is
a reduction in the rate of re-offending (Marshall et al., 1999),
reconviction data does not, in isolation, provide a realistic
representation of actual levels of re-offending by this group. It is
well established that there is a discrepancy between re-offending
and reconviction rates: the latter underestimating the number of
offences committed (Grubin, 1999). Indeed, a significant proportion
of offences committed by offenders are either unreported, or do not
result in the offender being convicted (Abel et al., 1987).
Reference: N.A.
(www.bangor.ac.uk/studyskills/study-guides/critical-writing.php.en)
