Reading Comprehension

PT158 · S1 · P4 · Q22 Criminal Sanctions

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The use of criminal sanctions against corporations is well established, but the practice has recently come under fire from legal theorists who maintain that corporations should be held civilly rather than criminally liable for wrongdoing.

Written Summary below video summary

Topic

Criminal vs. civil sanctions for corporate misdoings (as well as criminal sanctions against the corporation vs. against individuals within it)

Framework

Challenge a Position (she challenges two different positions)

Main Point

Criminal is better than civil, and criminally sanctioning corporations is better than criminally sanctioning individuals at those corporations.

Summary

P1 - Opposing Position #1 (let's use civil, not criminal sanctions)

We get our first Purpose Pivot (but, yet, however, recently) in the 2nd half of the first sentence. This sets the stage for the main topic: should we go after corporate wrongdoing with criminal or civil sanctions?

These legal theorists "maintain / argue / claim" a series of points: Point 1. Furthermore, Point 2. Finally, Point 3.

P2 - Author Challenges that Position (criminal is better)

Since the first paragraph stayed in the voice of the legal theorists, we would anticipate a new view in the 2nd paragraph, and the however tells us that the author is talking now. The author affirms that criminal is the better choice since it's a stronger deterrent, it's more feasible to actually bring a suit to court, and the moral condemnation we want to achieve is better expressed through criminal law.

P3 - Opposing Position #2 (lets do criminal sanctions against individuals, not against the corporation)

These other legal theorists "argue / they maintain / they say" that going after individuals would have a bigger deterrent effect and wouldn't have the risk of harming "innocent bystanders", like shareholders / creditors / employees / consumers, that would come with going after the corporations themselves.

P4 - Author Challenges Position #2 (better to do it against corporation)

Again, a however in the first sentence indicates to us that we're switching back to the Author's Voice. She thinks that targeting corporations is better because it's easier to prosecute a company for wrongdoing than to pin blame on individual employees, and the potential damage that criminal sanctions vs. a corporation can do to that corporation also has a deterrent effect on shareholders and employees.

Going after individuals deters the few wrongdoers from doing bad, but going after corporations means that the whole corporate culture will be motivated to stay on the good path. The author acknowledges that there can be some harmful byproducts of this path but reassures us that they are outweighed by the positives.

22.

Which one of the following most accurately describes the author's purpose in saying that corporations often bury responsibility within complex hierarchies?

to explain why corporations might
Bad Match
We were looking for something like, "to give a reason why it would be bad to make criminal sanctions target individuals, rather than the overall corporation", so this doesn't seem to reinforce the ideas we want. They stole this language from the sentence after the "complex hierarchies" sentence. But that sentence begins, "Another problem ...", indicating that the scapegoat sentence is problem #2. The complex hierarchies were problem #1. They're both problems with the "misguided" approach from the first sentence of the last paragraph.
14% picked this
to highlight the reasons why
Opposite
This answer says the sentence was supposed to be highlighting the point of view that "individuals should be prosecuted, since they're more responsive to deterrence" (a paragraph 3 idea). But the author's sentence was undermining that point of view, not helping it. The author uses buried responsibility to argue AGAINST individual prosecution. The claim being attributed here belongs to the critics' position in paragraph 3, not to what the author is doing with this specific point. The sentence in question is a counter-argument, not a summary of the critics' reasons.
7% picked this
to underscore the extent to
Out of Scope
The author never talks about how punishing individuals would be unfair. He simply thinks that we might not be able to locate blame with specific individuals or that the corporation will just bribe someone to be a scapegoat (thus we won't be able to prosecute a corporation for its wrongdoing).
4% picked this
Correct
to indicate that the proposal
Why this is right
We might not know what the word "impracticable", but does it sound positive or negative? It sounds like impractical, which is negative. So this answer would be saying the purpose of our author's complex hierarchy line was to indicate that "the proposal [to prosecute individuals] is something-negative." That seems appealing. After all, we were looking for something like, "to give a reason why it would be bad to make criminal sanctions target individuals, rather than the overall corporation". The meaning of impracticable is very very close to that of impractical. It just means "hard/impossible to put into practice". The misguided approach the author is talking about is "trying to prosecute individuals within corporations for wrongdoing, not the corporation itself." The author is like, "Psssh. Good luck! How are you going to figure out which specific individuals are responsible for a corporation's wrongdoing? Don't you know that corporations will bury responsibility within complex hierarchies? That makes it impracticable to prosecute specific individuals."
Skill tested: Local Purpose · how this choice captures the passage's function is the move to repeat next time.
74% picked this
to suggest that critics of
Out of Scope
We were looking for something like, "to give a reason why it would be bad to make criminal sanctions target individuals, rather than the overall corporation". This whole misunderstood the legal definition of criminal liability comes out of left field.
1% picked this

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