This doesn’t weaken, because the author’s argument isn’t based on the idea that punishment doesn’t have any deterrent effect for the individuals who are punished. What matters is whether the overall public is better off because of punishment. The author believes it’s not, because creditors can’t get paid when debtors are shut down or put in prison. Even if individuals show greater economic responsibility after they get out of prison, this doesn’t suggest that creditors are more likely to get their money back or that the overall public might be better off.

If the bankruptcy has a negative impact on the local economy, this doesn’t constitute a reason that harsh punishment might be better for the public good than the author thinks. If anything, (B) is simply telling us something negative about bankruptcy.

This tells us some historical data about the rate of bankruptcy filings. But it doesn’t say anything about the effect of these bankruptcies on public good.

This indicates that, in one case, shutting down a company resulted in growth to the local economy in the immediate aftermath. This is too narrow in scope compared to (E), and provides significantly weaker evidence compared to (E). What the author cares about is the public good. Even if we have a single example of the local economy improving shortly after the company was shut down, this single data point about benefit during a limited timeframe only barely suggests that the bankruptcies might be good for the public. The overall impact of the bankruptcy in this example might take longer to be seen; after the immediate aftermath, it’s possible we’ll begin to see harm from the bankruptcy. In addition, the effect in this one case might not be representative of the typical effect of bankruptcies on the economy.

This is the best answer, because it provides strong evidence that imprisoning debtors does not have a harmful effect on the overall economy. It’s important to notice that (E) tells us we are comparing “comparable” countries. That means we’re looking at countries that are generally similar to each other, except some continue to imprison debtors and others don’t. The fact we’re looking at “comparable” countries helps isolate the variable of imprisonment and make the correlation observed in (E) strong evidence that imprisonment isn’t harming overall economic health, and in fact may even be helping it.