Thinking Skills: Critical Thinking and Problem Solving

272 Unit 7 Critical reasoning: Advanced Level

need to know why the rate is higher in one

country than another, whether there were

special circumstances which necessitate or

justify a tougher prison policy. It is time to get

back to our first question: whether or not

prison works. If the rate has to be high to be

effective, then perhaps it is wrong to say the

rate of imprisonment in the USA is excessive.

by purely visual impressions. Interestingly, it is

not clear whether the truncating device

actually minimises the difference between the

USA, Russia and the other countries, or

exaggerates it by showing them as ‘off the

scale’. In its original context this graph came

with the caption ‘Exceptional America’, and

was part of a report that was critical of high

rates of imprisonment. So it may be that the

author wanted to make a point by emphasising

the gap. You can compare the two charts,

Chart 1 and Chart 2, and decide which you

think presents the data more strikingly.

Selectivity again

So does the data in Chart 1 support the

inference, or strengthen the argument, that

the rate is too high? Not really. For one thing it

still represents only a selection of countries,

and we have no information on why the

particular selection was made. It would have

to be established that there were not other

countries with comparable or even higher

proportions of their populations in jail.

Besides, for a statement like [2], we need more

and different data than mere comparisons

between countries. For instance, we would

Imprisonment worldwide

Inmates per 100,000 population

Selected countries, 2012 or latest available

USA

Russia

Brazil

Iran

Britain

China

Canada

France

Germany

Japan

050 100 150 200 250 300 350400450 500550600 650700 750

CHART 2

Activity

Read the following short comment from a

law-enforcement website:

[3] Prison works. Not only are those

inside prison prevented from

committing crimes, those outside

are deterred from committing

crimes by the knowledge that they

will face long sentences if caught.

Besides, the facts speak for

themselves: more prison, less crime.

John Keyes, Indiana, USA

To what extent do Charts 3 and 4, based on

official records, support the above argument?