#16 - Specific Reference, Must Be True, Purpose

[Administrator]

Please post your questions below!

[treyrg]

Hi!

This question is really confusing me. I am not happy with any of the answer choices, and I definitely ended up relying on my own thoughts rather than the text, but I'm really not seeing how the text supports answer choice D.

In line 30, it states that "...the legal system has to become forward looking, and address how an accused lawbreaker is likely to behave in the future." I get confused because this, in no way, necessarily refers to rehabilitation. The legal system may look at an accused lawbreaker and believe that they will most definitely commit a crime again in the future (or a crime similar to the one they are accused of) and decide that there is no chance of rehabilitation, but even this seems to beg the question.

Why am I supposed to believe that rehabilitation is related to this wording at all? Like I said, I was unhappy with all of the answer choices, and I kind of thought the answer might be D, but I didn't choose it because I couldn't (and still can't) convince myself that it's correct.

[Rachael Wilkenfeld]

Hi treyrg,

The question here asks us to think about which term in Passage B is most closely related to the concept of "forward-looking" from Passage A. We want to start by thinking about the term use in Passage A. Forward-looking is used as a contrast to thinking of blameworthiness. Passage A says that we shouldn't think about how blameworthy something is, but about what to do about that person in the future.

Rehabilitation is the only concept that's similar. It doesn't focus on blameworthiness, like retribution does. It's specifically compared to retribution in Passage B. And like forward-looking, rehabilitation is about what to do with the person moving forward. Can we fix them? How? What does that look like?

Hope that helps!