earnit wrote:
The following appeared as part of a campaign statement for Velazquez, who is seeking election as alderman in the town of Barchester:
“Under Police Commissioner Draco, the city of Spartanburg began jailing people for committing petty crimes such as littering, shoplifting, and spraying graffiti. Criminals in Spartanburg must have understood that lawlessness would no longer be tolerated, because the following year Spartanburg saw a 20% drop in violent crimes such as homicide. Our town should learn from Commissioner Draco’s success, and begin a large-scale crackdown on petty crime.”
Discuss how well reasoned you find this argument. In your discussion be sure to analyze the line of reasoning and the use of evidence in the argument. For example, you may need to consider what questionable assumptions underlie the thinking and what alternative explanations or counterexamples might weaken the conclusion. You can also discuss what sort of evidence would strengthen or refute the argument, what changes in the argument would make it more logically sound, and what, if anything, would help you better evaluate its conclusion.
MY RESPONSE:
The author of the passage stated that Under Police Commissioner Draco, the city of spartanburg has managed to keep its streets safer owing to large scale imprisonment of people for committing petty crimes such as, littering, shoplifting, and spraying graffiti. The author has concluded, based on the above development, that this approach has in turn lead to a fall in violent crimes such as homicide. This is a clear example of drawing a conclusion based on insufficient and less relevant evidence. The evidence is too weak to infer that Violent crimes have dropped due to crackdown on petty crimes.
One major flaw in the author's reasoning is that he fails to consider that jailing people for petty crimes may not necessarily deter criminals who are adept in violent crimes such as homicide or even rape. Conversely, it could in a way bolster confidence of criminals involved in violent crimes that since petty crimes is the priority of police, so they are not really the police's priority.
Secondly, the author relates the drop in violent crimes to increased arrests of people committing violent crimes. The author fails to consider that there could be other reasons for the drop in violent crimes. What if, the criminals that usually harbour in city of spartanburg had already decided,prior to the increased arrests of people for petty crimes, that they would conduct their crimes in some other city. The author fails to take in to account extraneous factors that could have lead to a fall in violent crimes.
Conversely, the act of arresting people for petty crimes such as spraying graffiti may end up instilling fear in the minds of even innocent citizens who might think twice before exercising their right to freedom of speech and expression. The argument would have been better reasoned, had the author provided conclusive evidence that shows increased arrests of criminals charged with violent crimes such as homicide and rape etc. In addition to that, if evidence confirming that the people arrested for petty crimes have a history of violent crimes as well, would have bolstered the author's argument.
In sum, the line of reasoning used by the author to arrive at the conclusion is weak and subject to debate. The author stands a better chance of justifying his conclusion by presenting the evidence as stated in the previous paragraph.
I'm gonna score this essay 5.5// nice-structural, abundance of academic words and comprehensive ideas