Q6 - Lawyer: Convicted criminals must pay "victim surcharge"

[aiwanic]

The correct answer is (D) - "a criminal should not be required to pay for services provided to victims of crimes that are more serious that they type of crime the criminal has been convicted of."

Why can we assume that nonviolent crimes are inherently "less serious" than violent crimes?

My best guess is that this is simply the LEAST horrible answer of the bunch.

Can someone please elaborate? Thanks!

[ohthatpatrick]

Your guess is correct.

Clearly, we could come up with examples of nonviolent crimes (perhaps ones involved in the 2008 Great Recession, costing thousands of people their jobs/home) that are more serious than a violent crime (assaulting someone at a bar).

But, overall, common sense says that violence is serious ... more serious than "petty theft".

=== complete explanation ===

Question type: Principle-Support

Task: Pick an answer choice that bridges the gap between the premise idea and the conclusion idea

ARGUMENT CORE
evidence
Surcharge applies to all crimes (violent and nonviolent)
+
Surcharge goes to fund victims of violent crimes

conclusion
Surcharge is unfair to nonviolent criminals

ANALYSIS
On Principle questions, it pays to remind yourself what you're trying to prove.

Here, we wanna prove that a penalty is unfair to a certain type of person (nonviolent criminals).

So any answer choice that is a conditional statement (which is normally all of them on a Principle question) should look like

----> penalty is unfair

Why is it unfair? What idea do we need to trigger?

Nonviolent criminals shouldn't have to pay into a fund for victims of violent crimes.

So a loose prephrase could be,
IF you're forced to contribute money to victims of a crime you didn't commit,
THEN the penalty is unfair

ANSWERS

(A) This principle would only ever help us assess whether a penalty is severe enough. There's no way to use this to argue that a penalty is unfair. Plus, the "most would be deterred" matches up with nothing from the evidence.

(B) Maybe. If we're saying the "victim surcharge" makes the overall penalty the same for violent / nonviolent criminals, this rule might allow us to say, "That's not right (that's unfair). Violent criminals should have a harsher overall penalty." The language of 'overall penalty' is not a strong match for the evidence, though.

(C) By contrapositive, this rule allows us to say a surcharge is unjustified (unfair). We just have to establish that "some of the proceeds of the surcharge are NOT used to provide services".

Can we say that here? Nope. As far as we know, all the proceeds go to services.

(D) "should not be req'd to pay" is a good enough match for "unfair". Can we say that nonviolent criminals, in paying the 'victim surcharge', would be paying for services provided to victims of more serious crimes than what the nonviolent criminals committed?

I guess so. The surcharge pays for victims of 'violent crimes'. So if we accept that 'violent crimes' are more serious than nonviolent crimes, then this rule works.

(E) This rule has a basement but no ceiling. We wouldn't be able to use this to say that a nonviolent criminal was paying "too much" (unfair).

So only (B) and (D) were promising.

For (B), we have no idea whether the "overall penalty" is the same or different for violent vs. nonviolent, and we need that idea to trigger the sense of unfairness. (the stimulus uses the phrase "in addition to any other penalties" to open the door for the idea that violent criminals may be subject to MORE overall penalty than nonviolent criminals, even with this surcharge being the same.)

For (D), we have to go with the assumption that violent crimes are more serious than nonviolent crimes.

(D) is the safer option and does a better job than any other answer at touching on the Evidence ("why are NON-violent criminals paying for victims of VIOLENT crimes") and Conclusion ("unfair!")