Reading Comprehension

PT138 · S1 · P4 · Q24 Discretionary Nonenforcement

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Passage A Law enforcement agencies can effectively nullify particular laws, or particular applications of law, simply by declining to prosecute violators.

Topic

The exercise of selective enforcement and legal discretion: when and why authorities choose not to enforce laws or rules literally, illustrated by law enforcement and by a real-world municipal case about overdue water bills.

Framework

Answer / Explain (Passage A); Problem / Solution (Passage B); The passages together also illustrate Theme / Example (with B as an example of ideas in A).

Main Point

Passage A: Law enforcement agencies frequently use their discretion to not prosecute certain violations because laws are often written too broadly, and enforcing them strictly would be impractical and unfair. The author explains that nonenforcement helps prevent excessive costs without opening up too many loopholes. (Most Valuable Sentence: ) Passage B: Rather than using typical property-related debt collection methods (liens), city officials plan to cut water service to a select few as an enforcement measure, due to a legal loophole that prevents them from placing liens on water debt. The passage questions whether changing the law would be a better solution.

P1: Passage A - Introduction to the Power of Nonenforcement

Law enforcement can effectively ignore certain laws by choosing not to prosecute some violators, and the author sets out to explain why this is common.

P2: Passage A - Why Laws Are Overinclusive and the Value of Discretion

Laws are usually written too broadly, catching behavior that lawmakers didn't intend to ban, because it's hard to perfectly capture every scenario. Strict enforcement would be costly and could punish the innocent, but giving enforcement agencies discretion allows them to avoid these issues without making the law full of loopholes.

P3: Passage A - Limits and Oversight of Discretionary Enforcement

While enforcement agencies could theoretically use their discretion capriciously, in reality they're kept in check by legislative oversight, so their discretion typically aligns with what lawmakers intended the law to achieve.

24.

Which one of the following statements can be inferred from the material in passage B?

Most water customers in the
Too Strong: Most
"Most" is very frequently a poisonous word, since it's so specifically claiming that we know something is at least 51% of a certain population. We can check the first paragraph for details on the prevalence of late paying. It only says that 231,000 customers are late. We don't know what % of the population that represents.
2% picked this
Most of the residences with
Too Strong: most
Similar to (A), we couldn't possibly speak to whether "at least 51% of the 231,000 late customers are from wealthy neighborhoods". Since the passage only brings up wealthy delinquents to say that, "the city plans to only target wealthy neighborhoods", this is compatible with the possibility that only 10% of the neighborhoods are wealthy. We have no idea what share of the 231,000 come from which type of neighborhood.
2% picked this
It is appropriate to turn
Too Strong: a few days late
There's a line at the end of the first paragraph that would seemingly support this: It says that the city is shutting off the water of some wealthy delinquents, who are in no position to complain because they were cheating the water utility system. If the author thinks they're in no position to complain, that does sound like, "It is justified / appropriate to turn the water off for someone who is cheating the system." But this was talking about delinquents who hadn't paid in "months, or even decades". Saying that we should shut the water off people who are a few days late is crazy extreme.
12% picked this
Correct
In recent years, the city
Why this is right
This is thinly supported by specific line references, but it appeals to a common sense understanding of who the writer of this passage is, and at what moment in time she would write an essay like this. She's learning about a problem, learning about the city's proposed solution, and writing an essay to suggest adopting a different course. Consider the counterfactual, that in recent years the city has frequently turned off the water of customers who were late. Would the 2nd sentence make sense? So [because of the delinquent bill problem], officials are planning to cut the water off rich people. If they were already doing it, then you wouldn't say that they're planning to do it. That connotes the future tense, not the present / present perfect. Similarly, the warning in the final sentence about "the political damage the city will take by deciding to shut off people's water" wouldn't make any sense if the city were already regularly engaging in this practice.
Skill tested: Inference · how this choice captures the passage's function is the move to repeat next time.
68% picked this
The only reasonable solution to
Too Strong: the only
The author is only saying that a more reasonable solution would be to address the law that precludes water bills from being subject to liens. Just because she thinks that changing the law is easier and politically smarter doesn't mean she thinks the inferior option is unreasonable. And even if we are to fix this by changing the law, we don't have to address it by classifying water bills as taxes. We could also address it by removing the loophole that says "if it's not a tax, you can't put a lien on it."
15% picked this

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