Appropriate Punishments

A free, expert breakdown of this official LSAT Reading Comprehension question.

TopicsPrincipleLaw

Keep going in LSAT Lab

Save & drill this skill — build targeted practice sets from questions like this one
Video walkthroughs — watch every question solved step by step
81 official LSATs — as questions, timed sections & full-length tests

Free to start

Full official LSAT questions are available through LawHub. This page provides LSAT Lab's explanation, strategy, and review tools without republishing the full official question.

Passage

Many of us can conceive of penalties that seem disproportionate to the crimes they are intended to punish. A sentence of probation for a person convicted of a brutal murder is one example of such an imbalance. At the other extreme is a sentence of twenty years source of these commonsense intuitions about the appropriateness of punishments?

There are two main rationales for punishing criminals. The first rationale justifies a punishment in terms of its benefit to society. Society is said to benefit whenever the fear of punishment deters a person from committing a crime, or when a convicted criminal is removed from contact with society at large. The asked about punishment is not whether it is beneficial, but whether it is just-that is, appropriate.

One problem with the social-benefit rationale is that it is possible that very harsh penalties even for minor offenses may have great benefit to society. For example, if shoplifters faced twenty-year jail sentences, shoplifting might be deterred. Yet something leads us to say that in such cases the penalty far outweighs the punishments and crimes. This is what fuels our notion of just (as opposed to beneficial) punishment.

However, it can be argued that our intuition of the injustice of an overly harsh punishment is based on our sense that such a punishment is more harmful to the criminal than beneficial to society; and, similarly, that our intuition that a punishment is just is based on our sense that this so-called intuitive notions of the appropriateness of punishments have their basis in the concept of benefit.

What this question is testing

Principle

Your task

Pin down exactly what the question asks about the passage — a detail, the author's view, the structure, or the main point — before looking at the choices.

Common trap

Answers that restate a true detail from the passage but don't answer the specific question being asked.

Winning move

Anticipate the answer in your own words from the passage, then find the choice that matches that prediction.

Reading along? Open the full official question in LawHub — we show a fragment here and keep the reasoning in our own words.

The question

14.

As described in the second paragraph, the second rationale for punishing criminals is most consistent with which one

Answer choices

Correct55% picked this
The correctness of an action depends not on its consequences but on
Why this is right
This answer is kind of sneaky because it's reinforcing language from the end of the 2nd paragraph, not from where the second rationale is initially defined. The end of the 2nd paragraph says: From the retributivist point of view (i.e. the 2nd rationale), the question to be asked about punishment is not whether it is beneficial, but whether it is just - that is, appropriate. So, the correctness (appropriateness) of an action depends not on its consequences (its benefits) but on its inherent fairness (whether it is just).
Skill tested: Principle · how this choice captures the passage's function is the move to repeat next time.
55%
Out of Scope: society deems correct4% picked this
The correctness of an action depends not on its consequences but on what
This seems incredibly close to (A), so we would mainly choose based on the difference. Both of them are trying to pull support from the final sentence of the 2nd paragraph. Do we feel better matching "whether it is just" to the idea of "fairness", in (A), or "what society deems correct", in (B)? The concept of fairness and justice is meant to transcend public opinion. For two centuries, American society deemed slavery correct, but we know it was not fair or just. During the Holocaust, German society deemed it correct that Jewish people would be taken away to concentration camps, but we wouldn't call that fair / just.
4%
Partially Contradicted11% picked this
The correctness of an action depends partly on its consequences and partly on
We're told in the middle of the 2nd paragraph that, the second rationale is that a punishment is justified by the severity of the crime, independent of any benefit to society. And at the end of the 2nd paragraph, it says that we should not be asking "whether a punishment is beneficial". So we're pretty much contradicting the part of this answer. The 2nd rationale isn't asking anything about the consequences of this punishment vs. that punishment. It only cares about whether the punishment matches the crime.
11%
Partially Contradicted9% picked this
The correctness of an action depends partly on its consequences and partly on
Similar to (C), we can say that the 2nd rationale does not think that the appropriateness of a punishment depends at all on the potential beneficial consequences of that punishment. They aren't considered with the effects of the punishment at all, only the cause of the punishment (i.e. what crime was committed that earned someone a punishment).
9%
Contradicted22% picked this
The correctness of an action depends entirely on
As discussed with (C) and (D), the 2nd rationale doesn't care at all about beneficial consequences of punishment.
22%

Continue the review in LSAT Lab

Save this question, watch the video walkthrough, and drill similar questions in your LSAT Lab account.

Save and practice this skill

LSAT Lab

Turn this review into a targeted study plan.

Save this question, drill more like it, watch the video walkthrough, and track your progress in your LSAT Lab account.

Start practicing free