Please Evaluate my AWA.

Essay 3
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.






Your Response:
The argument presented in the campaign statement for Velazquez has made unsubstantiated claims without proper evidence and facts. There are numerous assumptions which when challenged makes the argument loose its ground.

It is assumed that the crackdown on petty crimes had sent down a warning to Criminals, resulting in drop in violent crimes such as homicides. The possibility is ruled out that the potential victims of homicide could have been the people who committed petty crimes, since they were jailed it has resulted in the drop in violent crimes. The drop in crimes might have been a continuous trend even before the actions of Commissioner Draco. This might be simply be a case of correlation which is incorrectly presumed to be causation.

In addition, there are no evidence available about the current levels of violent crimes and petty crimes of Spartanburg and the feasibility of bringing it down by employing the same strategy as that of Barchester. It is not known whether the problems such as spraying graffiti or shoplifting even exist in Spartanburg.

Furthermore, the scale at which petty crimes needs to be curbed in order to have the desired effect on violent crime is unknown. Without this, Mr.Velazquez called for a "large-scale" crackdown on petty crime. It rules out the possibility of inciting Violent crimes because of the crackdown on petty crimes.

In the light of the above mentioned flaws, it can be concluded that the argument of Velazquez is prone to attacks on the logical ground. However, the argument can be strengthened by providing evidence on whether the crackdown on petty crimes has led to drop in violent crimes , by performing a feasibility study based on the characteristics of the nature of crimes committed in both the towns, by confirming that there are no other causes which has brought down the violent crimes in Spartanburg and by evaluating the option that this strategy doesn't increase violent rates.