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Major Field Test (MFT) Criminal Justice Practice Exam

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Which principle holds that the offender's criminal history should objectively be taken into account in sentencing decisions?
Correct Answer:
Social debt
Explanation:
Prior criminal history is treated as an aggravating factor in sentencing, signaling that the offender poses an ongoing risk and has shown a pattern of wrongdoing. The principle that captures this is social debt—the idea that a person who has harmed society by committing crimes owes a debt that sentencing should address, often by increasing punishment to reflect past behavior and deter future offenses. Moral culpability, by contrast, focuses on the offender's blameworthiness for the current act and the intent behind it, rather than past acts. The other options don’t describe how past conduct influences punishment; terms like recidivism credit aren’t standard concepts used to justify harsher penalties based on history, and dismissal is unrelated to sentencing decisions.

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