#24 - Police commissioner: Last year our city experienced a

[Beatrice Brown]

Hi Musa! Thanks so much for your great question

As you pointed out, answer choice (B) is rather vague because we need to make a lot of assumptions for this answer choice to weaken the stimulus. First, we don't know for how many years judges were imposing these penalties. But the stimulus is very specific and only refers to the drop in the crime rate last year. We need to explain the reason for the drop in crime rate in this specific year, but answer choice (B) does not necessarily entail that a crime rate reduction would happen in this year. Perhaps these penalties only influenced crime rates 10 years ago when they were first beginning to be imposed; there's no guarantee that the policy will influence last year's crime rate. Second, the answer choice only says "some crimes," but the stimulus is about violent crime. If the harsh penalties were only for crimes that were not violent, then this answer choice does not actually weaken the police commissioner's argument.

By contrast, for answer choice (E), fewer assumptions need to be made. Since answer choice (E) tells us that the policy was enacted 2 years ago and the hiring would continue for the 3 subsequent years, this means that the city hired 100 police officers in the year the crime reduction in question happened. As such, we have another cause for the drop in crime rate! The new police officers can have the same effect as the new mandatory sentencing law by arresting these violent criminals. If that's the case, then we cannot be certain that the drop in the crime rate is due to the new sentencing law, as the police commissioner concludes.

The main difference between answer choices (B) and (E) that makes answer choice (E) stronger is the certainty of the time frame. In answer choice (E), we know for certain that the policy would have some sort of effect during the last year. But with answer choice (B), there's a good chance that the harsh penalties didn't influence last year's crime rate, especially since answer choice (B) only applies to some crimes.

I hope this helps, and let me know if you have any further questions!

[CJ12345:]

Hi, Powerscore,
I initially chose AC A but after reading the forum, I understand why it is not correct. I am not sure if it is okay to generalize a rule that if the stimulus mentions A (e.g., City A in this case or participants of children in another stimulus), the AC is highly likely to be wrong if it mentions another different group not mentioning in the stimulus (e.g., City B in this case in AC A)?

[Jeff Wren]

Hi CJ,

The short answer is no, you don't want to make that generalization.

In causal arguments (which we have in this question), one of the best ways to weaken them is to show examples of:

the stated cause occurring without the stated effect or

the stated effect occurring without the stated cause.

These other examples generally won't be in the same city (or place) as discussed in the argument.

For example, if an answer stated that another town had implemented the exact same law and did not have a decrease in violent crime, that would be a possible correct weaken answer choice.

The main problem with Answer A is that it just states that there is a general correlation between increased economic activity and a decrease in crime, not that increased economic activity caused the decrease in crime. In fact, it is just as likely (maybe even more likely) the other way around. In other words, the decrease in crime led to increase in economic activity.