Q 18 - Citizen: Each year since 1970, a new record

[ecampos.jr54]

I chose D for this question because I thought it supported the citizen's stance while weakening the city official's stance. I'm failing to see how E would weaken the city official's response. Would you please explain? Thanks so much.

[ohthatpatrick]

The citizen's conclusion is that law enforcement has gotten worse at preventing violent crime since 1970.

The city official is suggesting that's wrong by offering the premise that number of murder victims per 100 has gone down since 1970.

To pre-phrase one of these best counters person #2 type questions, you just want to fill in these blanks:

Given that it's true that Person 2's premise,
how can I still argue Person 1's conclusion?

So here we're looking at ...

Given that it's true that murder victims per 100 people has gone down since 1970
how can we still argue that law enforcement has gotten worse about preventing violent crime since 1970

(A) this is about fraud, which is not a violent crime. Irrelevant.

(B) this digs more into Person 2's statistic, but it doesn't say anything incriminating about it. Does nothing.

(C) This means that there may have been MANY MORE violent crimes in 1970 than we even know about! This seems relevant. But wait, this goes the wrong direction. This strengthens Person 2's position. If there were EVEN MORE violent crimes in 1970 than we knew about, then the number of murder victims per 100 has fallen by an even greater degree since 1970.

(D) This sounds like responsible governance. Population increased, so the number of law enforcement officials also did. Meanwhile, the murder rate has fallen since 1970. Looks like we're doing a good job! Does nothing, but if anything it would strengthen Person 2's position.

(E) This is the flipside of (C). There actually would have been MANY MORE murders last year, if we were playing by 1970's health care standards. This allows us to argue that law enforcement IS worse nowadays.

Let's pretend 1970's murder rate was 1.3 out of 100 people
Last year's murder rate was 1.1 out of 100 people ("fallen slightly")

(E) is saying that if we controlled for health care standards, last year's murder rate would have really been 3.3 out of 100 people (WAY worse than 1970!)

If we've gotten way better at treating assault victims, their injuries will not prove to be fatal, and thus the crime will not count as "murder".

But we're apparently way worse at preventing violent crimes (such as assault), because using 1970's health care standards we would have a murder rate several times what it was in the 1970.

The correct answer is (E).

Hope this helps.