PrepTest 141, Section 2, 13. Reformer: A survey of police departments…

How will the right answer fit in terms of support and conclusion?

Only the right answer will accurately describe a flaw in the argument, but it will also usually be the only one that accurately describes the support and conclusion.

Highlight the main conclusion in the passage, if there is one:

putting more people in prison cannot help to reduce crime.

Reformer: [BACKGROUND]. [SUPPORT], but [SUPPORT], and [BACKGROUND]. This demonstrates that [CONCLUSION].

So basically, because a lot more folks are in prison but the crime rate hasn’t gone down, putting more folks in prison cannot reduce crime. In any case, you should see that’s way too strong a conclusion to reach based just on one bit of research.

If you’re more advanced, then you know that “no significant reduction” in crime is still better than crime going up. How does the author know that’s not what woulda happened if they hadn’t been putting more folks in prison?

Map the wording of the answers to the wording of the passage:

(A) …because the national crime rate has increased…

Stop. No it hasn’t. The passage only says it didn’t go down.

(B) …the crime rate would have been significantly increased if it had not been for the greater rate of imprisonment.

So if they hadn’t been putting more folks in prison, the crime rate might have gone up. And that would entirely blow the conclusion up. Sounds like a flaw to me. They’re expecting it to sound that way to you too, even if you didn’t catch it while you were reading.

(C) …the population has increased significantly…

Everything in the passage is rates, not actual numbers of people. That means changes in the number of people don’t matter to us, only the percentage of those people committing crimes and going to prison.

(D) presumes…that alternative measures…would be more effective…

Stop. No it doesn’t. There are no alternative measures referenced anywhere.

(E) …must be proportional…

Whoa, way too strong. It’s the right idea, but you gotta know that “proportional” means there’s a direct unchanging relationship between two numbers. This author didn’t suggest anything that specific.

(B) is the correct answer.