Magazine article: Punishment for crimes is justified if it actually de

Question

Magazine article: Punishment for crimes is justified if it actually deters people from committing them. But a great deal of carefully assembled and analyzed empirical data show clearly that punishment is not a deterrent. So punishment is never justified.

The reasoning in the magazine article’s argument is flawed because the argument

(A) depends on data that there is reason to suspect may be biased

(B) mistakenly allows the key term “punishment” to shift in meaning

(C) mistakes being sufficient to justify punishment for being required to justify it

(D) ignores the problem of mistakenly punishing the innocent

(E) attempts to be more precise than its subject matter properly allows

stne · Accepted Answer

Basically the stem says that.

Punishment should only be given if it leads to less crime and since we have NOT achieved less crime punishment is NOT justified.

Flaw:
Actually crime itself is justification for the punishment, if a crime has been committed then the act itself justifies the punishment. and it is not the other way round, it is NOT necessary that punishment should only be given ONLY if it reduces crime.  Less crime should not be REQUIRED, in order to justify punishment. If this were the case then NO crime or criminal could ever be punished. Which is absurd.

Options:

(A) depends on data that there is reason to suspect may be biased:  INCORRECT.

(B) mistakenly allows the key term “punishment” to shift in meaning:  INCORRECT.

(C) mistakes being sufficient to justify punishment for being required to justify it:  CORRECT.

(D)ignores the problem of mistakenly punishing the innocent :  INCORRECT.

(E)attempts to be more precise than its subject matter properly allows:  INCORRECT.

Ans-C

Hope it's clear.

jain3120 · Answer

The information available to us is
• Punishment acts as deterrent hence justified
• New studies show, it doesn’t act as a deterrent hence it is not justified

Let’s analyse the options

A. No information points towards the accuracy of the data. WRONG
B. Not true. WRONG
C. The argument says it is never justified to punish since it is not a deterrent. CORRECT 
D. However, it still doesn’t say anything about the sufficiency of a reason to justify punishment. WRONGNot relevant. WRONG
E. Not relevant. WRONG

Masterclass_Space · Answer

Magazine article: Punishment for crimes is justified if it actually deters people from committing them. But a great deal of carefully assembled and analyzed empirical data show clearly that punishment is not a deterrent. So punishment is never justified.

The reasoning in the magazine article’s argument is flawed because the argument

(A) depends on data that there is reason to suspect may be biased (incorrect) 
Reason to suspect may be biased compels one to believe that punishment is justified as option A suggests another possibility of premise. However flaw should be in reasoning instead of finding the possibility of the premise.

(B) mistakenly allows the key term “punishment” to shift in meaning (incorrect) 
Option B creates multiple possibilities of a sense of punishment as it suggests the shifting of meaning that can be interpreted anyway.

(C) mistakes being sufficient to justify punishment for being required to justify it (the best option)  
Punishment is not a deterrent thus punishment is not the solution. As the author considers that something does not work should not be taken into practice and this general assumption is added with argument. The flaw in reasoning is that it is generalizing the case.

(D) ignores the problem of mistakenly punishing the innocent (incorrect) 
It raises another point of discussion to categorize the guilty into two parts: innocent and guilty

(E) attempts to be more precise than its subject matter properly allows (incorrect) 
Precision cannot justify the flaw in reasoning as the author considers that because punishment does not help hence punishment is not the solution to problems.

aryanm98 · Answer

Eliminated down to C, even though I did not completely understand it. Good question.

bb · Answer

Good question, not a very typical GMAT Question but a good one. Here, i replied and that should completely answer your request

The flaw and the problem in the question is that the article tells us if deterrence does not work, then punishment is not justified. That's illogical and not connected in the passage. There is no logical connection between deterring and justification. These are two completely unrelated things. So the problem is that the text never establishes deterrence as a necessary (required) condition. When the author observes that punishment does not deter and jumps to “So punishment is never justified,” they wrongly treat deterrence as something that must be present for punishment to be justified. That is the classic mistake of confusing a sufficient condition with a necessary one. This is why C is the correct answer.

Magazine article: Punishment for crimes is justified if it actually de

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