Appropriate Punishments

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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

Main Point

Your task

Capture the passage's overall primary point — the claim everything else supports.

Common trap

Answers that are true but too narrow (a single paragraph) or too broad (beyond the passage's scope).

Winning move

Summarize the whole passage in one sentence first, then match it to a choice.

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

The question

Which one of the following most accurately states the main point of

Answer choices

Too Strong7% picked this
Of the two main rationales for justifying punishing criminals, the retributivist rationale can be shown to be more fundamental, since our sense of the
Too Strong: more fundamental Contradicted, if anything In the last paragraph, the author is saying that the second rationale (which is the more retributivist one) seems to be "grounded in the first", making the first rationale (which is about societal benefit) seem like the more fundamental one. She also says that "the retributive nature disappears", so that seems like the opposite of "the retributive rationale is the more fundamental".
7%
Too Strong: inadequacy Wrong Emphasis5% picked this
Although social benefit appears to be a reasonable rationale for punishing criminals, the fact that it can justify very harsh penalties for even minor
The author does not argue for the retributivist rationale. It seems like we're forced to accept that rationale in the 3rd paragraph, but then in the 4th paragraph the author rescues the relevance of the societal benefit rationale, saying that our intuitions about appropriate punishments are really balancing both rationales.
5%
Wrong Emphasis6% picked this
Because the retributivist rationale for punishing criminals allows for proportionality between punishments and crimes, it is able to support our intuitions that certain penalties
Just like (B), this answer makes it seem like the author landed on "the retributivist rationale" is the correct one, but the author's final paragraph is saying our notions of fairness come from balancing severity of crime with the harm to criminal / benefit to society of the punishment. The author is basically saying that our sense of societal benefit / harm to criminal is what informs our intuitions about whether a punishment is or isn't proportionate.
6%
Wrong Emphasis2% picked this
Because the rationale that punishment is justified by the severity of the crime amounts to no more than retribution, punishment of a criminal can
This answer choice makes it sound like the author landed on "societal benefit" is the winner. But the final paragraph is saying, "it's the combo of the two things (societal benefit of punishment + severity of crime) that informs our judgment of whether a penalty is fair"
2%
Correct79% picked this
Although it appears better able to support our intuitions about just and unjust punishment than the social-benefit rationale, the rationale that punishments ought to
Why this is right
The warm-up clause to this answer choice describes the author's discussion in the 3rd paragraph, where it appears like we kind of have to accept that our intuitions are coming from the second (severity) rationale. And the main clause to this answer describes the author's takeaways in the 4th paragraph, particularly the language in the second to last sentence of the passage.
Skill tested: Main Point · how this choice captures the passage's function is the move to repeat next time.
79%

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