Reformer: A survey of police

Answer choices

1. A

   Bad Conclusion/Premise Match3% picked this

   infers without justification that because the national crime rate has increased, the number of crimes reported by each

   If an answer says infers that because X, Y then X should match the Premise and Y should match the Conclusion. Did our evidence say that the national crime rate has increased? Nope. We can stop reading there. The conclusion half of this answer is also wrong, but we don't need to ever even reach that half.

   3%
2. B

   Correct57% picked this

   ignores the possibility that the crime rate would have significantly increased if it had not been for the

   Why this is right

   This makes the ol' Anti-Causal objection of "it would have been even worse without X". When Obama became President in the midst of the Great Recession, unemployment had been growing for months. The government issue a big ol' stimulus plan, and the unemployment continued to grow for months. Some people would say, "Look the stimulus did nothing", and others would retort, "What do you mean, do you know how bad things would have been if we hadn't injected $800 billion into the economy". When we see an answer choice saying ignores the possibility that X we can ask ourselves, "If X were true, would it hurt the argument?" In this case, heck yeah! If we say to the author, "If it hadn't been for putting more people in prison, the crime rate would have gone way up", then we've basically shown that "putting more people in prison did help to reduce crime".

   Skill tested: Flaw · how this choice captures the argument's function is the move to repeat next time.

   57%
3. C

   Irrelevant23% picked this

   overlooks the possibility that the population has increased significantly over the

   When they tell us that we're dealing with an average or a per capita, then absolute totals don't matter. The crime rate is the number of crimes per 100,000 people. If the crime rate is 1000 crimes per 100,000 people, then it's a 1% crime rate. If the population increases to 800,000 people, then an identical crime crate would involve 8,000 crimes. When the author says "can't help to reduce crime", it's implied by context that she means the aforementioned crime rate, not any absolute number of crimes. If she did mean "number of crimes", then this answer would still fail, since a much larger population will result in a much higher number of crimes than before. How would that help us argue that putting people in prisons has reduced crime?

   23%
4. D

   Out of Scope: alternative measures5% picked this

   presumes, without providing warrant, that alternative measures for reducing crime would be more

   In order to successfully prove that "this key does not fit this lock" you don't have to first prove that you know a different key that does fit the lock. Maybe there are no available keys that fit the lock. Your conclusion about "this key" can be correct either way. Similarly, our author is just trying to establish that "putting people in jail" doesn't work to reduce crime. He's not obligated to prove that there are other methods that do work.

   5%
5. E

   Too Strong: must be proportional13% picked this

   takes for granted that the number of prisoners must be proportional to the number

   Any time we see takes for granted that X we can ask ourselves, "Did this author need to assume that X?" Our author wasn't ever assuming the incredibly extreme idea that number of prisoners must be proportional to number of crimes committed.

   13%