Self-study
Stimulus Breakdown
A citizen argues with a city official. Our goal is to counter the official's argument, and to do that we need to first fully understand both arguments being made.
The citizen concludes that the city's law enforcement is decreasingly able to prevent violent crime. How does the citizen know? Because the city has seen a greater number of murders every year since 1970. The citizen is assuming that the increase in the number of murders is caused by a decrease in law enforcement's effectiveness.
The official attempts to rebut this position by suggesting an alternative cause: the city's growing population. By pointing out this fact, which leaves the city with a lower murder rate proportional to its population, the official supports the unstated conclusion that law enforcement is no less able to prevent violent crime than in the 1970s.
Objective: Counter the City Official
To counter the official's argument, we need to support the claim that law enforcement has gotten worse at preventing violent crime, even though the murder rate per 100 people has fallen slightly. For example, we could consider other types of violent crime besides murder. If the rate of assaults is much higher than in the 1970s, then that would undermine the official.
However, it's hard to predict exactly what the correct answer will be. We should keep an open mind and carefully consider the effects of each answer choice. No matter its details, the correct answer will show us that violent crime has actually gotten worse since the 1970s.
18.
Which one of the following, ██ █████ █████ ████ ████████ ███████ ███ ████ ████████████ █████████
a
The incidence of █████ ███ ███████ █████████ ██ ███ ████ █████ █████
The stimulus is limited to violent crime, which reasonably does not include fraud. Because we're only talking about violent crime, (A) doesn't have any impact on the official's argument.
b
The rate of ███████ ██ ███ ████ █████ ████ █████████ █████████ ██ ███ ███ █████ ██ ███ ███████ ██████████ ████ ███ ███████ ████████
We already know that murder rates have decreased since 1970; the exact breakdown isn't relevant to determining whether violent crime has truly gotten worse.
c
Murders and other ███████ ██████ ███ ████ ██████ ██ ██ ████████ ███ ████ ████ ████ ██ █████
If anything, (C) strengthens the official's argument. If violent crimes are more likely to be reported and murder rates have still declined, law enforcement is probably doing a good job.
(C) would be a good answer if it said that violent crimes were now less likely to be reported. That would have given us reason to believe there was really more violent crime.
d
The number of ███ ███████████ █████████ ██ ███ ████ ███ █████████ ██ █ ████ ██████ ██ ████ ███ ███████████ ███████ ██ ██ ██████████ ██ █████ ███ ████████ █████████ ███████████
In other words, the city's experts think there are enough police—but that doesn't change anything for the argument. We still don't know if those police are effective, or if there's really more violent crime.
Remember, we want to undermine the conclusion that law enforcement is effectively reducing violent crime rates. Unless we assume more police means more violent crime, (D) doesn't help with that.
e
If the health ████ ████████ ██ ███████ ███████ ████ ████ ███ ████ ██ ███ ████ ███████ ██ ██ ███ ██ █████ ███ ██████ ████ ██ ███ ████ ████ ████ █████ ████ ██████ ███ ██ ██ ███████ █████ ████ ██ ████████ ████
In other words, the murder rate has only decreased because of improved healthcare. There were many serious assaults that the official doesn't account for by just discussing murder. This gives us good reason to believe that violent crime overall is worse.
(E) isn't a perfect answer: we still don't have a complete picture of violent crime now or in the 1970s. But we can at least say things are worse than the official believes, which undermines the official's argument.