Reading Comprehension

PT138 · S1 · P4 · Q27 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.

27.

Passage A suggests that an instance of "capricious enforcement" (last sentence of passage A) most likely involves

enforcing the law only to
Unrelated to Goal
We're looking for "enforcing the law against violators who are inadvertently brought within the scope of the rule, not the violators intended to be targeted by the rule". This is talking about being restrained by municipal resources, because the word "resources" was in the previous sentence (Word-Bait).
5% picked this
enforcing the law according to
Opposite
We're looking for "enforcing the law against violators who are inadvertently brought within the scope of the rule, not the violators intended to be targeted by the rule". This would be the opposite. It's talking about enforcing against the intended violators, not the accidental-violators.
12% picked this
prioritizing enforcement of the law
Unrelated to Goal
We're looking for "enforcing the law against violators who are inadvertently brought within the scope of the rule, not the violators intended to be targeted by the rule". This is talking about prosecuting based on damage caused.
8% picked this
not understanding the difference between
Weak Match
We're looking for "enforcing the law against violators who are inadvertently brought within the scope of the rule, not the violators intended to be targeted by the rule". This is talking about enforcing the law against both of them because you don't actually understand the difference between violators intended to be prosecuted and people who are technically violating the letter of the law but not the spirit of the law. In the 3rd paragraph, they aren't referring to an agency who can't figure out the difference between a correct violator and an accidental violator. They're talking about an agency actually concentrating intentionally on the people who are "inadvertently" described by the law. You'd have to understand which people are intended to be covered by the law vs. which people are inadvertently covered by the law in order to concentrate on the latter.
7% picked this
Correct
not following the intent of
Why this is right
We're looking for "enforcing the law against violators who are inadvertently brought within the scope of the rule, not the violators intended to be targeted by the rule". Some violators of a rule are intentionally within the scope of the rule (the rule was written to address them). Other violators are only inadvertently within the scope of the rule. Prosecutors are supposed to be using their discretion, recognizing that these violators were not really the intended target when the legislature composed this law, and therefore not prosecuting them. Capricious enforcement is doing the opposite. It's targeting people who weren't meant to be targeted by the law.
Skill tested: Meaning in Context · how this choice captures the passage's function is the move to repeat next time.
67% picked this

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