Logical reasoning PrepTest 120 · Section 1 · Question 1

Incorrect. The evidence here is not emotional—the number of police officers and the crime rate are both objective measurements.

Incorrect. The argument is about the crime rates, not the number of criminals, so this is immaterial to the argument and thus not something the argument needed to consider.

Incorrect. The statistical evidence is not stated to be limited in any way, so it's of all neighborhoods and thus not too small of a sample.

Correct. Argument or Facts:
Argument

Valid or Flawed:
Flawed

Question Type:
Errors in Reasoning

Stimulus Summary:
Expectation - Areas with the most police have the least crime
Reality - Areas with the most police have the most crime
Conclusion - Police don't decrease crimes

Answer Anticipation:
This argument falls into a very specific pattern on the LSAT—the anti-causal argument. Here, a potential solution to a problem is shown to be correlated with that problem being worse, and the conclusion is that the solution doesn't work or is even counterproductive.

However, think about where a solution is most likely to be implemented—most likely, in an area that has a major problem. As such, it's possible that high-crime areas maintain a larger police force because they have a high crime rate, and those police do decrease the crime rate, just not as low as in other areas that didn't have much crime to begin with.

In other words, the relevant comparison isn't to other areas that may have much lower crime rates, but rather to the high-crime area with and without the higher levels of police. The latter is the only way to tell if those police are having the desired effect.

Answer Explanation:
This answer highlights that increasing the number of patrolling police might happen in areas that have a lot of crime, thus bringing down a high rate even if that rate is still higher than other areas. This answer is a common one in these types of "anti-causal" arguments.

Key Takeaway:
When an argument uses a correlation to show that a supposed solution isn't working, the argument falls into the "anti-causal" pattern. When this happens, the answer usually has something to do with the solution being implemented in response to the problem being large in scale, and thus the solution could be working even without resolving the problem or getting it down to average levels.

Incorrect. The argument doesn't conclude that this money is wasted, or could be spent better elsewhere, or that it should be spent elsewhere, so this answer is out of scope.