Judge Brown has shown a marked preference over the past decade

Dear ManishKM1,

I'm happy to respond.

My friend, the human sciences are messy, especially when compared to the natural sciences. There's a high level of precision in the natural sciences--every time we mix the same two chemicals, the same thing happens, like clockwork. Computers and coding also have that level of precision: the same line of code will do the same thing each time. Real human beings are messier than computers or lab chemicals. Real human beings are idiosyncratic, unpredictable, and unreliable. Real human beings often behave according to trends, but regularly act completely counter to expectation.

My friend, I don't know what you studied in your undergraduate degree, but if it was anything in science or engineering or computers, it may be that you need to familiarize yourself with the "feel" of social sciences--psychology, sociology, anthropology, etc.

The prompt says:
He [Judge Brown] argues that the rate of recidivism, or the likelihood that the criminal will commit another offense, is only 15% when he does so, while the average rate of recidivism in the country as a whole is above 35%.

To a math or computer person, those look like probabilities. To someone who has studied the social sciences, a drop from 35% to 15% is mind-bogglingly good! If a social scientist got such a large different in her own results, she would dance for joy! This is an enormous difference. If that's not apparent to you, you have to get yourself more familiar with some of the social sciences.

Also, purely on mathematical grounds, keep in mind what probability really means. Let's talk about a fair coin. When we say that the probability of H is 1/2, we are making a precise mathematical statement, not an approximation. We are saying that any individual flip of the coin is random, unpredictable, and even a small number of flips in a row would be relatively unpredictable, but if we were to flip that coin a large number of times--100, 1000, 10000, etc.--then we necessarily would see a pattern of very close to 50% H and 50% T. I don't know whether you understand the calculus idea of a limit, but the limit as the number of trials goes to infinity is equal to the probability. That large-scale statement is not an approximation at all! Mathematically, probability is always a statement of complete uncertainty in the individual instance and of 100% certainty in the long-run overall pattern. Flip a coin once, and I have no idea how it will turn out. Flip a coin 10,000 times, and I can make a precise prediction about the narrow range of outcomes.

Of course, real human beings are not as neat and precise as coins, but similar principles apply. The 35% and 15% are statements about the overall pattern, about the long-term trend in the data. These numbers doesn't allow us to know much of anything about how one individual in isolation might behave, but they tell us deeply meaningful information about the large-scale population pattern. Once again, the population-wide statement is NOT an approximation: instead, it is a meaningful quantitative statement about an overall proportion of a relevant population.

I am going to recommend this blog to you:
GMAT Critical Reasoning and Outside Knowledge

Does all this make sense?
Mike

Yes, I see what you are saying. I still think it's doubtful whether repeat offenders would be "cured" from pursuing criminal activities by simply apologizing to their victims, but I guess that's not the point here and only my own opinion.

That's why I am having a hard time with critical reasoning questions. I always want to reason and evaluate based on my opinion and not based on what the argument is implying.

Hi Mike,

yes, it makes total sense now. Thanks!

I was able to eliminate option C,D and E. I find option B to be strengthening the case in the first look. Although option A is a powerful one which leaves little to no doubts about the argument, option B successfully managed to distract me.

Hi Mike,

I indeed had this reasoning while solving this question but what kept me from concluding anything was a counter-theory. And that was the reason i could not mark A. Here it is:

1) From the prompt we have- 'the likelihood that the criminal will commit another offense, is only 15% when he does so...'
- This is a generic theory that the Judge puts and this applies to all criminals.

2) From option A we have- 'The majority of the defendants that the judge sees are already repeat offenders...'
- This is talking about ONLY the criminals that the Judge sees.

Now, the reasoning that you gave above takes a leap and combines (1) and (2). There is no reason to believe that the theory Judge gives in (1) applies to the group of criminals in (2). It may or may not. A is not foolproof.

What do you say about this?

Dear arhumsid,

I'm happy to respond.

Anything stated in a CR prompt as fact is evidence, and we must accept it as true. Even if a character in the prompt cites something as fact, we need to accept that evidence and treat it as true.

The prompt say that the judge argues (1) is true for ALL criminals. We have to take this as evidence, as something true, a statement true about all criminals. Thus, it would be true about the criminals that appear before him or before any other judge. Thus, if (2) is true about the criminals that appear before him, then both (1) & (2) would apply.

Does this make sense?
Mike

Hi Mike,

Could you please elaborate a little one why (E) is a weak answer choice?

My initial thought process between (E) and (A) was:
- (A) strongly augments the argument that Judge Brown has has success in reducing recidivism through sentencing amendments versus imprisonment. Ultimately, this is still one case where such an approach was successful
- (E), although not as strong a supporting fact in Judge Brown's case, exemplifies another scenario where sentencing amendments, as opposed to imprisonment, reduces recidivism. In my mind, this effectively doubles the strength of the general statement that "the criminal justice system is most effective when criminals make amends for their crime, rather than serving time."

Could you please help me bridge my line of thinking with that of the GMAT.

Thanks!
Kyle

Your reasoning is fine and such a reasoning is used in real world a lot. Even mostly in GMAT RCs Author would first say a little -ve about some theory or concept and then he will show some facts and later show the worth of the theory. This surely brings the reader to believe in that theory.

But here in this question this is not applicable because of the stats that Premise shows. here is it:

Conclusion says demands MOST EFFECTIVENESS. For this, criminals making amends for their crime would be considered EFFECTIVE if average comes down to 15% from 35%. But 35% to 22% would not be considered MOST EFFECTIVE.

mikemcgarry : COmpletely agree with your reasoning of A. But there is another reason of objection.
so lets say only 15% Recidivism criminals now commit crime later on. what if the crime that they commit is more devastating / heinous in nature than what 35% criminal who went for sentence does.

while A takes care of quanity, B addresses quality of crime. If B is true, we can't say this method is effective, can we?

Dear abrakadabra21,

I'm happy to respond.

My friend, with all due respect, that objection is quite unrealistic. Human behaviors are very hard to change, and in any human group, there's natural variation.

It would be unrealistic that all 15% of those who atone go out and commit atrocious crimes, whereas all 35% of the non-atoning ones go out and commit non-violent & less serious crimes. From the nature of human populations, we would expect the proportions in the two group to be roughly equal, percent who commit violent crimes. Choice (B) suggests some difference--we don't know how significant a change this would be--does "less likely" mean 20% vs. 90% or 32% vs. 37%? We don't know. Experience with the nature of human populations suggests that, even if (B) were true, it wouldn't be a gigantic difference.

And if (B) is not true, then the rates of violent crimes are equal or, ironically, the rate for the atoners would be slightly higher--still, the overall percentage of people committing violence crimes from the group of atoners would be smaller than it would be from the group of non-atoners. You see, we would have to imagine a fairy-tale mathematical scenario in which the rate of violent crimes in the atoning group is more than double what it is in the non-atoning group, and that's just not how real human populations work.

My friend, the GMAT CR is deeply faithful to the way real populations and real business behave in the real world. You don't need to be an expert on everything, but you need to have good instincts for the push & pull of the real world. See:
GMAT Critical Reasoning and Outside Knowledge
The GMAT doesn't ask the CR as an abstract logic puzzle. The GMAT asks the CR because real managers have to face and evaluate dozens of real-world arguments each day. The person who can think of abstract logical exceptions but who lacks the real-world grounding in how things work will struggle on both the GMAT CR and in a real-world managerial job.

My friend, does all this make sense?
Mike

Hi mikemcgarry,

Can we actually take the likelihood as a fact in reaching to the conclusion? Like mentioned in the argument, "recidivism rate for the convicts that Judge Brown has apologize has dropped to 15%, down from the standard 35%." is not a fact but an approximation. Can you pls help?

Regards

B is a trap, there is a similar gmat question, but the pattern in B turns out to be the correct answer.
In this question, B gives a comparison between repeat offenders who made amends and repeat offenders who don't. Clearly, the argument concerns whether amends helps to reduce the the repeat offenders.

Official Explanation
Answer = (A).

Judge Brown’s claim is that the justice system works better when criminals atone for their crimes. His evidence is that people are statistically less likely to reoffend in these cases. To strengthen his case, we need to strengthen the evidence or its link to the conclusion. The argument that the offenders he sees are already statistically more likely to reoffend than the average first-time offender makes it all the more impressive that the recidivism rate is so low for this population, making (A) the best answer.

Because the judge’s argument relies on evidence about rates of reoffense, the psychology of the criminals (B) is irrelevant to this argument. If the criminals are made to feel bad about their crimes, this might serve some social purpose, but it does not directly support the judge’s points about reoffense. Furthermore, this draws a distinction between violent vs. non-violent crime: while no one is a fan of violent crime, this distinction is not relevant the prompt's conclusion.

If the criminals self-selected for Judge Brown's program, then this would significantly weaken the argument. This self-selection would strongly suggest that it was some personal quality of these individuals, sensitivity or remorse or some internal state that caused them both to volunteer for Judge Brown's program and to avoid any other criminal offenses. We would not be able to extend a conclusion about the efficacy of Judge Brown's program to folks who did not volunteer for it—presumably those folks would constitute the majority.

While it’s great that the victims felt better (D), this statement is similar to (B) in that the psychology of the members involved is irrelevant to the case that the judge is making; he simply doesn’t use this kind of material as evidence.

Finally, even if the second judge sees a higher recidivism rate (E) with atonement that is less than the recidivism rate for the general population, this isn’t strong support for Judge Brown’s argument, because Judge Brown’s argument is based on his own experience in the courtroom, which he cites as evidence. While weakly supporting Judge Brown’s argument, this isn’t the best evidence that could be presented in its favor.

mikemcgarry

Could you please explain to us on how can we eliminate option D? My reasoning is that justice system can also be effective if victims are satisfied with the verdicts.

BR
Rishov

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