QUESTION TEXT: Reformer: A survey of police departments…
QUESTION TYPE: Flawed Reasoning
CONCLUSION: Putting people in jail can’t reduce crime.
REASONING: We put more people in jail, but the crime rate didn’t decrease.
ANALYSIS: In this argument, the author ignores an obvious objection: would the crime rate still have stayed the same if we hadn’t put people in jail?
It’s possible that crime would have risen if fewer people were in prison. If that were true, then it’s accurate to say that jail can reduce crime.
In other words, crime may naturally be increasing, but fortunately putting more people in jail has let us keep the crime rate stable.
___________
- The author didn’t say this.
Example of flaw: The national crime rate increased. So our tiny town’s reported crime rate must have increased, even though the only criminal retired. - CORRECT. It’s possible that crime was rising, but jail time managed to keep the crime rate stable.
- The amount of population doesn’t matter. The crime rate is just the total amount of crimes divided by the population. Presumably, if population increases, then the number of crimes goes up as well. A certain percentage of every thousand people will be criminals.
- The reformer didn’t propose any alternate measures to reducing crime. Their conclusion was simply that jail doesn’t work. It doesn’t matter whether any other measures work.
- I don’t know what to say except that the argument didn’t assume this. Proportionality almost never matters, incidentally.
Example of flaw: There were five crimes last year, and 3 prisoners. This year there were 10 crimes, double the number. So there must be 6 prisoners, double the number.
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Hillary says
B says imprisonment helps prevent the crime rate from further increasing
the conclusion says imprisonment cannot help to reduce crime
both can still be true (ie the crime rate remains constant)
FounderGraeme Blake says
Regarding E, a student found my explanation on proportionality in question 10 helpful in eliminating that answer: https://lsathacks.com/explanations/lsat-preptest-73/logical-reasoning-1/q-10/