Q24 - Legal theorist: Only two types of theories of criminal

[ohthatpatrick]

Question Type:
Inference (must be true)

Stimulus Breakdown:
(Read for CONDITIONAL, CAUSAL, COMPARATIVE, QUANTITATIVE).

CONDITIONAL - Acceptable theory of criminal sentencing --> Retribut or Rehabil.
CONDITIONAL - Retribut Acceptable --> conforms to proportionality principle.
CONDITIONAL - If a Retribut theory punishes more for repeat offenses -> does not conform to proportionalityprinciple.

Answer Anticipation:
Since our goal is to combine two or more claims in order to derive our answer, we start wondering whether these conditionals chain together, or whether we could apply these conditionals to any specific facts.

There is a little connection between the first two conditionals, since they both deal with Retributive theories. Acceptable theory -> Rehabilitationist or Retributivist (following the proprotionality principle).

The 2nd and 3rd conditional overlap because they both deal with conforming to or violating the proportionality principle. We could say "if you're punishing repeat offenders more harshly -> you're violating proportionality -> making retribut theory unacceptable".

It's hard to say what could tie all this together, so they're likely going to just combine a subset of these facts.

Correct Answer:
E

Answer Choice Analysis:
(A) We have no idea what any Rehab theory holds, other than "a sentence is a means to reform the offender".

(B) Reforming a repeat offender? We never talked about that.

(C) We know nothing about what Rehab theories hold, other than that sentences are a means to reform the offender.

(D) We could never prove any theory IS acceptable. The rule we were given was that "if it ISN'T Rehab or Retrib, then it ISN'T acceptable."

(E) YES, this works and they did a good job tying everything together. This says "If it's not Rehab and [Breaks the proportionality principle] , then it's not Acceptable." This is the contrapositive of the combined conditional we spoke of before: ~Rehabilitative and ~Retribut (following proportionality principle) --> ~Acceptable. Since we know that "giving longer sentences for repeat offenses" means that we are violating the proportionality principle, we know that we don't have Rehab and we don't have Retrib (that follows proportionality principle).

Takeaway/Pattern: It was pretty hard to totally own where they'd be going with all this. We knew they were offering conditionals because of ONLY (right side idea) and UNLESS ("if not"). The third sentence was more of a disguised conditional. It was a universal idea, saying that "ANY/ALL Retributivist theories that punish repeat offenders more are violating the proportionatlity principle".

If we know firmly that the first sentence gives us the idea of "IF acceptable, THEN one of these two types of theories", then it's easy to eliminate (C) and (D), which are acting like we could prove "IF ____ , THEN acceptable".

#officialexplanation

[JenaM342]

Question Type:
Inference (must be true)

Stimulus Breakdown:
(Read for CONDITIONAL, CAUSAL, COMPARATIVE, QUANTITATIVE).

CONDITIONAL - Acceptable theory of criminal sentencing --> Retribut or Rehabil.
CONDITIONAL - Retribut Acceptable --> conforms to proportionality principle.
CONDITIONAL - If a Retribut theory punishes more for repeat offenses -> does not conform to proportionalityprinciple.

Answer Anticipation:
Since our goal is to combine two or more claims in order to derive our answer, we start wondering whether these conditionals chain together, or whether we could apply these conditionals to any specific facts.

There is a little connection between the first two conditionals, since they both deal with Retributive theories. Acceptable theory -> Rehabilitationist or Retributivist (following the proprotionality principle).

The 2nd and 3rd conditional overlap because they both deal with conforming to or violating the proportionality principle. We could say "if you're punishing repeat offenders more harshly -> you're violating proportionality -> making retribut theory unacceptable".

It's hard to say what could tie all this together, so they're likely going to just combine a subset of these facts.

Correct Answer:
E

Answer Choice Analysis:
(A) We have no idea what any Rehab theory holds, other than "a sentence is a means to reform the offender".

(B) Reforming a repeat offender? We never talked about that.

(C) We know nothing about what Rehab theories hold, other than that sentences are a means to reform the offender.

(D) We could never prove any theory IS acceptable. The rule we were given was that "if it ISN'T Rehab or Retrib, then it ISN'T acceptable."

(E) YES, this works and they did a good job tying everything together. This says "If it's not Rehab and [Breaks the proportionality principle] , then it's not Acceptable." This is the contrapositive of the combined conditional we spoke of before: ~Rehabilitative and ~Retribut (following proportionality principle) --> ~Acceptable. Since we know that "giving longer sentences for repeat offenses" means that we are violating the proportionality principle, we know that we don't have Rehab and we don't have Retrib (that follows proportionality principle).

Takeaway/Pattern: It was pretty hard to totally own where they'd be going with all this. We knew they were offering conditionals because of ONLY (right side idea) and UNLESS ("if not"). The third sentence was more of a disguised conditional. It was a universal idea, saying that "ANY/ALL Retributivist theories that punish repeat offenders more are violating the proportionatlity principle".

If we know firmly that the first sentence gives us the idea of "IF acceptable, THEN one of these two types of theories", then it's easy to eliminate (C) and (D), which are acting like we could prove "IF ____ , THEN acceptable".

#officialexplanation

Hi Patrick! When you said "we know that we don't have Rehab and we don't have Retrib" did you mean to say that you we DO have Rehab? Because if it is an acceptable theory than it has to be one or the other, right?