SBI PO 2018: Prelims Question Paper - 2 | SBI PO Mock Test Series & Past Year Papers 2024 - Bank Exams PDF Download

 Page 1


                                      
    
 
  
                          
 
 
Directions (1-5):  Read the following passage and 
answer the questions that follow 
Shirley Schmitt is no one’s idea of a dangerous 
criminal. She lived quietly on a farm in Iowa, raising 
horses and a daughter, until her husband died in 
2006. Depressed and suffering from chronic pain, 
she started using methamphetamine. Unable to 
afford her habit, she and a group of friends started to 
make the drug, for their own personal use. She was 
arrested in 2012, underwent drug treatment, and has 
been sober ever since. She has never sold drugs for 
profit, but federal mandatory minimum rules, along 
with previous convictions for drug possession and 
livestock neglect, forced the judge to sentence her to 
ten years in prison. Each year she serves will cost 
taxpayers roughly $30,000—enough to pay the fees 
for three struggling students at the University of Iowa. 
When she gets out she could be old enough to draw 
a pension. Barack Obama tried to reduce the number 
of absurdly long prison sentences in America. His 
attorney-general, Eric Holder, told federal 
prosecutors to avoid seeking the maximum penalties 
for non-violent drug offenders. This reform caused a 
modest reduction in the number of federal prisoners 
(who are about 10% of the total). Donald Trump’s 
attorney-general, Jeff Sessions, has just torn it up. 
This month he ordered prosecutors to aim for the 
harshest punishments the law allows, calling his new 
crusade against drug dealers “moral and just”. It is 
neither. Prisons are an essential tool to keep society 
safe. A burglar who is locked up cannot break into 
your home. A mugger may leave you alone if he 
thinks that robbing you means jail. Without the threat 
of a cell to keep them in check, the strong and selfish 
would prey on the weak, as they do in countries 
where the state is too feeble to run a proper justice 
system. But as with many good things, more is not 
always better. The first people any rational society 
locks up are the most dangerous criminals, such as 
murderers and rapists. The more people a country 
imprisons, the less dangerous each additional 
prisoner is likely to be. At some point, the costs of 
incarceration start to outweigh the benefits. Prisons 
are expensive—cells must be built, guards hired, 
prisoners fed. The inmate, while confined, is unlikely 
to work, support his family or pay tax. Money spent 
on prisons cannot be spent on other things that might 
reduce crime more, such as hiring extra police or 
improving pre-school in rough neighbourhoods. 
And— crucially—locking up minor offenders can 
make them more dangerous, since they learn 
felonious habits from the hard cases they meet 
Page 2


                                      
    
 
  
                          
 
 
Directions (1-5):  Read the following passage and 
answer the questions that follow 
Shirley Schmitt is no one’s idea of a dangerous 
criminal. She lived quietly on a farm in Iowa, raising 
horses and a daughter, until her husband died in 
2006. Depressed and suffering from chronic pain, 
she started using methamphetamine. Unable to 
afford her habit, she and a group of friends started to 
make the drug, for their own personal use. She was 
arrested in 2012, underwent drug treatment, and has 
been sober ever since. She has never sold drugs for 
profit, but federal mandatory minimum rules, along 
with previous convictions for drug possession and 
livestock neglect, forced the judge to sentence her to 
ten years in prison. Each year she serves will cost 
taxpayers roughly $30,000—enough to pay the fees 
for three struggling students at the University of Iowa. 
When she gets out she could be old enough to draw 
a pension. Barack Obama tried to reduce the number 
of absurdly long prison sentences in America. His 
attorney-general, Eric Holder, told federal 
prosecutors to avoid seeking the maximum penalties 
for non-violent drug offenders. This reform caused a 
modest reduction in the number of federal prisoners 
(who are about 10% of the total). Donald Trump’s 
attorney-general, Jeff Sessions, has just torn it up. 
This month he ordered prosecutors to aim for the 
harshest punishments the law allows, calling his new 
crusade against drug dealers “moral and just”. It is 
neither. Prisons are an essential tool to keep society 
safe. A burglar who is locked up cannot break into 
your home. A mugger may leave you alone if he 
thinks that robbing you means jail. Without the threat 
of a cell to keep them in check, the strong and selfish 
would prey on the weak, as they do in countries 
where the state is too feeble to run a proper justice 
system. But as with many good things, more is not 
always better. The first people any rational society 
locks up are the most dangerous criminals, such as 
murderers and rapists. The more people a country 
imprisons, the less dangerous each additional 
prisoner is likely to be. At some point, the costs of 
incarceration start to outweigh the benefits. Prisons 
are expensive—cells must be built, guards hired, 
prisoners fed. The inmate, while confined, is unlikely 
to work, support his family or pay tax. Money spent 
on prisons cannot be spent on other things that might 
reduce crime more, such as hiring extra police or 
improving pre-school in rough neighbourhoods. 
And— crucially—locking up minor offenders can 
make them more dangerous, since they learn 
felonious habits from the hard cases they meet 
                                      
    
 
 
                          
inside. America passed the point of negative returns 
long ago. Its incarceration rate rose fivefold between 
1970 and 2008. Relative to its population, it now 
locks up seven times as many people as France, 
11times as many as the Netherlands and 15 times as 
many as Japan. It imprisons people for things that 
should not be crimes (drug possession, prostitution, 
unintentionally violating incomprehensible 
regulations) and imposes breathtakingly harsh 
penalties for minor offences. Under “three strikes” 
rules, petty thieves have been jailed for life. A ten-
year sentence costs ten times as much as a one-year 
sentence, but is nowhere near ten times as effective 
a deterrent. Criminals do not think ten years into the 
future. If they did, they would take up some other line 
of work. One study found that each extra year in 
prison raises the risk of reoffending by six percentage 
points. Also, because mass incarceration breaks up 
families and renders many ex-convicts 
unemployable, it has raised the American poverty 
rate by an estimated 20%. Many states, including Mr 
Sessions’s home, Alabama, have decided that 
enough is enough. Between 2010 and 2015 
America’s incarceration rate fell by 8%. Far from 
leading to a surge in crime, this was accompanied by 
a 15% drop. America is an outlier, but plenty of 
countries fail to use prison intelligently. There is 
ample evidence of what works. Reserve prison for 
the worst offenders. Divert the less scary ones to 
drug treatment, community service and other 
penalties that do not mean severing ties with work, 
family and normality. A good place to start would be 
with most of the 2.6m prisoners in the world—a 
quarter of the total—who are still awaiting trial. For a 
fraction of the cost of locking them up, they could be 
fitted with GPS-enabled ankle bracelets that monitor 
where they are and whether they are taking drugs. 
Tagging can also be used as an alternative to locking 
up convicts—a “prison without walls”, to quote Mark 
Kleiman of New York University, who estimates that 
as many as half of America’s prisoners could usefully 
be released and tagged. A study in Argentina finds 
that low-risk prisoners who are tagged instead of 
being incarcerated are less likely to reoffend, 
probably because they remain among normal folk 
instead of sitting idly in a cage with sociopaths. 
Justice systems could do far more to rehabilitate 
prisoners, too. Cognitive behavioural therapy—
counselling prisoners on how to avoid the places, 
people and situations that prompt them to commit 
crimes—can reduce recidivism by10-30%, and is 
especially useful in dealing with young offenders. It is 
also cheap—a rounding error in the $80 billion a year 
that America spends on incarceration and probation. 
Yet, by one estimate, only 5% of American prisoners 
have access to it. Ex-convicts who find a job and a 
place to stay are less likely to return to crime. In 
Norway prisoners can start their new jobs18 months 
before they are released. In America there are 
27,000 state licensing rules keeping felons out of jobs 
such as barber and roofer. Norway has a lower 
recidivism rate than America, despite locking up only 
Page 3


                                      
    
 
  
                          
 
 
Directions (1-5):  Read the following passage and 
answer the questions that follow 
Shirley Schmitt is no one’s idea of a dangerous 
criminal. She lived quietly on a farm in Iowa, raising 
horses and a daughter, until her husband died in 
2006. Depressed and suffering from chronic pain, 
she started using methamphetamine. Unable to 
afford her habit, she and a group of friends started to 
make the drug, for their own personal use. She was 
arrested in 2012, underwent drug treatment, and has 
been sober ever since. She has never sold drugs for 
profit, but federal mandatory minimum rules, along 
with previous convictions for drug possession and 
livestock neglect, forced the judge to sentence her to 
ten years in prison. Each year she serves will cost 
taxpayers roughly $30,000—enough to pay the fees 
for three struggling students at the University of Iowa. 
When she gets out she could be old enough to draw 
a pension. Barack Obama tried to reduce the number 
of absurdly long prison sentences in America. His 
attorney-general, Eric Holder, told federal 
prosecutors to avoid seeking the maximum penalties 
for non-violent drug offenders. This reform caused a 
modest reduction in the number of federal prisoners 
(who are about 10% of the total). Donald Trump’s 
attorney-general, Jeff Sessions, has just torn it up. 
This month he ordered prosecutors to aim for the 
harshest punishments the law allows, calling his new 
crusade against drug dealers “moral and just”. It is 
neither. Prisons are an essential tool to keep society 
safe. A burglar who is locked up cannot break into 
your home. A mugger may leave you alone if he 
thinks that robbing you means jail. Without the threat 
of a cell to keep them in check, the strong and selfish 
would prey on the weak, as they do in countries 
where the state is too feeble to run a proper justice 
system. But as with many good things, more is not 
always better. The first people any rational society 
locks up are the most dangerous criminals, such as 
murderers and rapists. The more people a country 
imprisons, the less dangerous each additional 
prisoner is likely to be. At some point, the costs of 
incarceration start to outweigh the benefits. Prisons 
are expensive—cells must be built, guards hired, 
prisoners fed. The inmate, while confined, is unlikely 
to work, support his family or pay tax. Money spent 
on prisons cannot be spent on other things that might 
reduce crime more, such as hiring extra police or 
improving pre-school in rough neighbourhoods. 
And— crucially—locking up minor offenders can 
make them more dangerous, since they learn 
felonious habits from the hard cases they meet 
                                      
    
 
 
                          
inside. America passed the point of negative returns 
long ago. Its incarceration rate rose fivefold between 
1970 and 2008. Relative to its population, it now 
locks up seven times as many people as France, 
11times as many as the Netherlands and 15 times as 
many as Japan. It imprisons people for things that 
should not be crimes (drug possession, prostitution, 
unintentionally violating incomprehensible 
regulations) and imposes breathtakingly harsh 
penalties for minor offences. Under “three strikes” 
rules, petty thieves have been jailed for life. A ten-
year sentence costs ten times as much as a one-year 
sentence, but is nowhere near ten times as effective 
a deterrent. Criminals do not think ten years into the 
future. If they did, they would take up some other line 
of work. One study found that each extra year in 
prison raises the risk of reoffending by six percentage 
points. Also, because mass incarceration breaks up 
families and renders many ex-convicts 
unemployable, it has raised the American poverty 
rate by an estimated 20%. Many states, including Mr 
Sessions’s home, Alabama, have decided that 
enough is enough. Between 2010 and 2015 
America’s incarceration rate fell by 8%. Far from 
leading to a surge in crime, this was accompanied by 
a 15% drop. America is an outlier, but plenty of 
countries fail to use prison intelligently. There is 
ample evidence of what works. Reserve prison for 
the worst offenders. Divert the less scary ones to 
drug treatment, community service and other 
penalties that do not mean severing ties with work, 
family and normality. A good place to start would be 
with most of the 2.6m prisoners in the world—a 
quarter of the total—who are still awaiting trial. For a 
fraction of the cost of locking them up, they could be 
fitted with GPS-enabled ankle bracelets that monitor 
where they are and whether they are taking drugs. 
Tagging can also be used as an alternative to locking 
up convicts—a “prison without walls”, to quote Mark 
Kleiman of New York University, who estimates that 
as many as half of America’s prisoners could usefully 
be released and tagged. A study in Argentina finds 
that low-risk prisoners who are tagged instead of 
being incarcerated are less likely to reoffend, 
probably because they remain among normal folk 
instead of sitting idly in a cage with sociopaths. 
Justice systems could do far more to rehabilitate 
prisoners, too. Cognitive behavioural therapy—
counselling prisoners on how to avoid the places, 
people and situations that prompt them to commit 
crimes—can reduce recidivism by10-30%, and is 
especially useful in dealing with young offenders. It is 
also cheap—a rounding error in the $80 billion a year 
that America spends on incarceration and probation. 
Yet, by one estimate, only 5% of American prisoners 
have access to it. Ex-convicts who find a job and a 
place to stay are less likely to return to crime. In 
Norway prisoners can start their new jobs18 months 
before they are released. In America there are 
27,000 state licensing rules keeping felons out of jobs 
such as barber and roofer. Norway has a lower 
recidivism rate than America, despite locking up only 
                                      
    
 
 
                          
its worst criminals, who are more likely to reoffend. 
Some American states, meanwhile, do much better 
than others. Oregon, which insists that programmes 
to reform felons are measured for effectiveness, has 
a recidivism rate less than half as high as 
California’s. Appeals to make prisons more humane 
often fall on deaf ears; voters detest criminals. But 
they detest crime more, so politicians should not be 
afraid to embrace proven ways to make prison less of 
a school of crime and more of a path back to 
productive citizenship. 
 
1. Choose the synonym for Felonious 
a) Official pardon 
b) Bartender 
c) Sage 
d) Criminal 
e) None of these. 
 
2. What is author’s tone during description of the 
passage? 
a) Critical 
b) Analytical 
c) Biased 
d) Both a and b 
e) None of these. 
 
3. Choose Antonym for Embrace 
a) Mock 
b) Detest 
c) Thrash 
d) Welcome 
e) None of these. 
 
4. Choose the most appropriate title for the passage. 
a) Jail break 
b) Deciding on Jail laws 
c) Jail and America 
d) All of the above 
e) None of these. 
 
5. Which of the following is true? 
a) The Jails in America are the only ones not working 
well 
b) America needs to learn from India in terms of Jail 
manipulation 
c) There are various alternatives available to putting 
in jail for minor offenders 
d) All of the above 
e) None of these. 
 
Direction (6-10): Five sentences denoted by A, B, C, 
D and E have been given. Identify the odd sentence 
and arrange rest of the four sentences in such a way 
that they make a meaningful paragraph.  
 
6. 
(A) The report, which summarized 2016 data for 
4,300 cities, ranks 14 Indian cities among the 20 
most polluted ones globally. 
(B) In 2016 alone, it says, around 4.2 million people 
died owing to outdoor air pollution, while 3.8 million 
Page 4


                                      
    
 
  
                          
 
 
Directions (1-5):  Read the following passage and 
answer the questions that follow 
Shirley Schmitt is no one’s idea of a dangerous 
criminal. She lived quietly on a farm in Iowa, raising 
horses and a daughter, until her husband died in 
2006. Depressed and suffering from chronic pain, 
she started using methamphetamine. Unable to 
afford her habit, she and a group of friends started to 
make the drug, for their own personal use. She was 
arrested in 2012, underwent drug treatment, and has 
been sober ever since. She has never sold drugs for 
profit, but federal mandatory minimum rules, along 
with previous convictions for drug possession and 
livestock neglect, forced the judge to sentence her to 
ten years in prison. Each year she serves will cost 
taxpayers roughly $30,000—enough to pay the fees 
for three struggling students at the University of Iowa. 
When she gets out she could be old enough to draw 
a pension. Barack Obama tried to reduce the number 
of absurdly long prison sentences in America. His 
attorney-general, Eric Holder, told federal 
prosecutors to avoid seeking the maximum penalties 
for non-violent drug offenders. This reform caused a 
modest reduction in the number of federal prisoners 
(who are about 10% of the total). Donald Trump’s 
attorney-general, Jeff Sessions, has just torn it up. 
This month he ordered prosecutors to aim for the 
harshest punishments the law allows, calling his new 
crusade against drug dealers “moral and just”. It is 
neither. Prisons are an essential tool to keep society 
safe. A burglar who is locked up cannot break into 
your home. A mugger may leave you alone if he 
thinks that robbing you means jail. Without the threat 
of a cell to keep them in check, the strong and selfish 
would prey on the weak, as they do in countries 
where the state is too feeble to run a proper justice 
system. But as with many good things, more is not 
always better. The first people any rational society 
locks up are the most dangerous criminals, such as 
murderers and rapists. The more people a country 
imprisons, the less dangerous each additional 
prisoner is likely to be. At some point, the costs of 
incarceration start to outweigh the benefits. Prisons 
are expensive—cells must be built, guards hired, 
prisoners fed. The inmate, while confined, is unlikely 
to work, support his family or pay tax. Money spent 
on prisons cannot be spent on other things that might 
reduce crime more, such as hiring extra police or 
improving pre-school in rough neighbourhoods. 
And— crucially—locking up minor offenders can 
make them more dangerous, since they learn 
felonious habits from the hard cases they meet 
                                      
    
 
 
                          
inside. America passed the point of negative returns 
long ago. Its incarceration rate rose fivefold between 
1970 and 2008. Relative to its population, it now 
locks up seven times as many people as France, 
11times as many as the Netherlands and 15 times as 
many as Japan. It imprisons people for things that 
should not be crimes (drug possession, prostitution, 
unintentionally violating incomprehensible 
regulations) and imposes breathtakingly harsh 
penalties for minor offences. Under “three strikes” 
rules, petty thieves have been jailed for life. A ten-
year sentence costs ten times as much as a one-year 
sentence, but is nowhere near ten times as effective 
a deterrent. Criminals do not think ten years into the 
future. If they did, they would take up some other line 
of work. One study found that each extra year in 
prison raises the risk of reoffending by six percentage 
points. Also, because mass incarceration breaks up 
families and renders many ex-convicts 
unemployable, it has raised the American poverty 
rate by an estimated 20%. Many states, including Mr 
Sessions’s home, Alabama, have decided that 
enough is enough. Between 2010 and 2015 
America’s incarceration rate fell by 8%. Far from 
leading to a surge in crime, this was accompanied by 
a 15% drop. America is an outlier, but plenty of 
countries fail to use prison intelligently. There is 
ample evidence of what works. Reserve prison for 
the worst offenders. Divert the less scary ones to 
drug treatment, community service and other 
penalties that do not mean severing ties with work, 
family and normality. A good place to start would be 
with most of the 2.6m prisoners in the world—a 
quarter of the total—who are still awaiting trial. For a 
fraction of the cost of locking them up, they could be 
fitted with GPS-enabled ankle bracelets that monitor 
where they are and whether they are taking drugs. 
Tagging can also be used as an alternative to locking 
up convicts—a “prison without walls”, to quote Mark 
Kleiman of New York University, who estimates that 
as many as half of America’s prisoners could usefully 
be released and tagged. A study in Argentina finds 
that low-risk prisoners who are tagged instead of 
being incarcerated are less likely to reoffend, 
probably because they remain among normal folk 
instead of sitting idly in a cage with sociopaths. 
Justice systems could do far more to rehabilitate 
prisoners, too. Cognitive behavioural therapy—
counselling prisoners on how to avoid the places, 
people and situations that prompt them to commit 
crimes—can reduce recidivism by10-30%, and is 
especially useful in dealing with young offenders. It is 
also cheap—a rounding error in the $80 billion a year 
that America spends on incarceration and probation. 
Yet, by one estimate, only 5% of American prisoners 
have access to it. Ex-convicts who find a job and a 
place to stay are less likely to return to crime. In 
Norway prisoners can start their new jobs18 months 
before they are released. In America there are 
27,000 state licensing rules keeping felons out of jobs 
such as barber and roofer. Norway has a lower 
recidivism rate than America, despite locking up only 
                                      
    
 
 
                          
its worst criminals, who are more likely to reoffend. 
Some American states, meanwhile, do much better 
than others. Oregon, which insists that programmes 
to reform felons are measured for effectiveness, has 
a recidivism rate less than half as high as 
California’s. Appeals to make prisons more humane 
often fall on deaf ears; voters detest criminals. But 
they detest crime more, so politicians should not be 
afraid to embrace proven ways to make prison less of 
a school of crime and more of a path back to 
productive citizenship. 
 
1. Choose the synonym for Felonious 
a) Official pardon 
b) Bartender 
c) Sage 
d) Criminal 
e) None of these. 
 
2. What is author’s tone during description of the 
passage? 
a) Critical 
b) Analytical 
c) Biased 
d) Both a and b 
e) None of these. 
 
3. Choose Antonym for Embrace 
a) Mock 
b) Detest 
c) Thrash 
d) Welcome 
e) None of these. 
 
4. Choose the most appropriate title for the passage. 
a) Jail break 
b) Deciding on Jail laws 
c) Jail and America 
d) All of the above 
e) None of these. 
 
5. Which of the following is true? 
a) The Jails in America are the only ones not working 
well 
b) America needs to learn from India in terms of Jail 
manipulation 
c) There are various alternatives available to putting 
in jail for minor offenders 
d) All of the above 
e) None of these. 
 
Direction (6-10): Five sentences denoted by A, B, C, 
D and E have been given. Identify the odd sentence 
and arrange rest of the four sentences in such a way 
that they make a meaningful paragraph.  
 
6. 
(A) The report, which summarized 2016 data for 
4,300 cities, ranks 14 Indian cities among the 20 
most polluted ones globally. 
(B) In 2016 alone, it says, around 4.2 million people 
died owing to outdoor air pollution, while 3.8 million 
                                      
    
 
 
                          
people succumbed to dirty cooking fuels such as 
wood and cow dung.  
(C) All the countries in their region are making efforts 
to expand the availability of clean fuel and 
technologies. 
(D) A new report from the World Health Organisation 
highlights not only how widespread air pollution is in 
urban India, but also how deficient air quality 
monitoring is. 
(E) The report puts the global death toll from air 
pollution at seven million a year, attributable to 
illnesses such as lung cancer, pneumonia and 
ischemic heart disease. 
a) BEAC 
b) ADEC 
c) CAEB 
d) EBDA 
e) DAEB 
 
 
7. 
(A) “This situation would not have arisen if the ASI 
had done its job”, bench of Justices told Additional 
Solicitor General. 
(B) The counsel for ASI told the court that the 
problem of insects was due to stagnation of water of 
river Yamuna. 
(C) The Supreme Court on Wednesday came down 
heavily on the Archological Survey of Indian for its 
failure to take appropriate steps to protect and 
preserve the iconic Taj Mahal. 
(D) “It also added, “we are surprised at the way ASI is 
defending itself and Centre please consider if the ASI 
is needed there or not”. 
(E) The apex court also expressed concern over Taj 
Mahal being infected by insects and asked the 
authorities, including the ASI, what steps they have 
taken to prevent this. 
a) BEAC 
b) DAEC 
c) CEAD 
d) EBDA 
e) ADCE 
 
8.  
(A) If a salaried individual earns income from other 
sources then they have to pay advance tax too. 
(B) Advance tax is the tax payable on total income of 
the year earned from different sources including 
salary, business, profession, rent, etc.  
(C) Advance tax is applicable to individuals who earn 
income from sources other than salary like Interest 
earned on fixed deposits, Income received via capital 
gains on shares etc. 
 
(D) Advance tax can be paid through tax payment 
challans at bank branches which are authorised by 
the Income Tax department.  
(E) Salaried individuals need not pay advance tax as 
they already pay tax at source because their 
employer deducts the tax at source. 
a) EBAC 
Page 5


                                      
    
 
  
                          
 
 
Directions (1-5):  Read the following passage and 
answer the questions that follow 
Shirley Schmitt is no one’s idea of a dangerous 
criminal. She lived quietly on a farm in Iowa, raising 
horses and a daughter, until her husband died in 
2006. Depressed and suffering from chronic pain, 
she started using methamphetamine. Unable to 
afford her habit, she and a group of friends started to 
make the drug, for their own personal use. She was 
arrested in 2012, underwent drug treatment, and has 
been sober ever since. She has never sold drugs for 
profit, but federal mandatory minimum rules, along 
with previous convictions for drug possession and 
livestock neglect, forced the judge to sentence her to 
ten years in prison. Each year she serves will cost 
taxpayers roughly $30,000—enough to pay the fees 
for three struggling students at the University of Iowa. 
When she gets out she could be old enough to draw 
a pension. Barack Obama tried to reduce the number 
of absurdly long prison sentences in America. His 
attorney-general, Eric Holder, told federal 
prosecutors to avoid seeking the maximum penalties 
for non-violent drug offenders. This reform caused a 
modest reduction in the number of federal prisoners 
(who are about 10% of the total). Donald Trump’s 
attorney-general, Jeff Sessions, has just torn it up. 
This month he ordered prosecutors to aim for the 
harshest punishments the law allows, calling his new 
crusade against drug dealers “moral and just”. It is 
neither. Prisons are an essential tool to keep society 
safe. A burglar who is locked up cannot break into 
your home. A mugger may leave you alone if he 
thinks that robbing you means jail. Without the threat 
of a cell to keep them in check, the strong and selfish 
would prey on the weak, as they do in countries 
where the state is too feeble to run a proper justice 
system. But as with many good things, more is not 
always better. The first people any rational society 
locks up are the most dangerous criminals, such as 
murderers and rapists. The more people a country 
imprisons, the less dangerous each additional 
prisoner is likely to be. At some point, the costs of 
incarceration start to outweigh the benefits. Prisons 
are expensive—cells must be built, guards hired, 
prisoners fed. The inmate, while confined, is unlikely 
to work, support his family or pay tax. Money spent 
on prisons cannot be spent on other things that might 
reduce crime more, such as hiring extra police or 
improving pre-school in rough neighbourhoods. 
And— crucially—locking up minor offenders can 
make them more dangerous, since they learn 
felonious habits from the hard cases they meet 
                                      
    
 
 
                          
inside. America passed the point of negative returns 
long ago. Its incarceration rate rose fivefold between 
1970 and 2008. Relative to its population, it now 
locks up seven times as many people as France, 
11times as many as the Netherlands and 15 times as 
many as Japan. It imprisons people for things that 
should not be crimes (drug possession, prostitution, 
unintentionally violating incomprehensible 
regulations) and imposes breathtakingly harsh 
penalties for minor offences. Under “three strikes” 
rules, petty thieves have been jailed for life. A ten-
year sentence costs ten times as much as a one-year 
sentence, but is nowhere near ten times as effective 
a deterrent. Criminals do not think ten years into the 
future. If they did, they would take up some other line 
of work. One study found that each extra year in 
prison raises the risk of reoffending by six percentage 
points. Also, because mass incarceration breaks up 
families and renders many ex-convicts 
unemployable, it has raised the American poverty 
rate by an estimated 20%. Many states, including Mr 
Sessions’s home, Alabama, have decided that 
enough is enough. Between 2010 and 2015 
America’s incarceration rate fell by 8%. Far from 
leading to a surge in crime, this was accompanied by 
a 15% drop. America is an outlier, but plenty of 
countries fail to use prison intelligently. There is 
ample evidence of what works. Reserve prison for 
the worst offenders. Divert the less scary ones to 
drug treatment, community service and other 
penalties that do not mean severing ties with work, 
family and normality. A good place to start would be 
with most of the 2.6m prisoners in the world—a 
quarter of the total—who are still awaiting trial. For a 
fraction of the cost of locking them up, they could be 
fitted with GPS-enabled ankle bracelets that monitor 
where they are and whether they are taking drugs. 
Tagging can also be used as an alternative to locking 
up convicts—a “prison without walls”, to quote Mark 
Kleiman of New York University, who estimates that 
as many as half of America’s prisoners could usefully 
be released and tagged. A study in Argentina finds 
that low-risk prisoners who are tagged instead of 
being incarcerated are less likely to reoffend, 
probably because they remain among normal folk 
instead of sitting idly in a cage with sociopaths. 
Justice systems could do far more to rehabilitate 
prisoners, too. Cognitive behavioural therapy—
counselling prisoners on how to avoid the places, 
people and situations that prompt them to commit 
crimes—can reduce recidivism by10-30%, and is 
especially useful in dealing with young offenders. It is 
also cheap—a rounding error in the $80 billion a year 
that America spends on incarceration and probation. 
Yet, by one estimate, only 5% of American prisoners 
have access to it. Ex-convicts who find a job and a 
place to stay are less likely to return to crime. In 
Norway prisoners can start their new jobs18 months 
before they are released. In America there are 
27,000 state licensing rules keeping felons out of jobs 
such as barber and roofer. Norway has a lower 
recidivism rate than America, despite locking up only 
                                      
    
 
 
                          
its worst criminals, who are more likely to reoffend. 
Some American states, meanwhile, do much better 
than others. Oregon, which insists that programmes 
to reform felons are measured for effectiveness, has 
a recidivism rate less than half as high as 
California’s. Appeals to make prisons more humane 
often fall on deaf ears; voters detest criminals. But 
they detest crime more, so politicians should not be 
afraid to embrace proven ways to make prison less of 
a school of crime and more of a path back to 
productive citizenship. 
 
1. Choose the synonym for Felonious 
a) Official pardon 
b) Bartender 
c) Sage 
d) Criminal 
e) None of these. 
 
2. What is author’s tone during description of the 
passage? 
a) Critical 
b) Analytical 
c) Biased 
d) Both a and b 
e) None of these. 
 
3. Choose Antonym for Embrace 
a) Mock 
b) Detest 
c) Thrash 
d) Welcome 
e) None of these. 
 
4. Choose the most appropriate title for the passage. 
a) Jail break 
b) Deciding on Jail laws 
c) Jail and America 
d) All of the above 
e) None of these. 
 
5. Which of the following is true? 
a) The Jails in America are the only ones not working 
well 
b) America needs to learn from India in terms of Jail 
manipulation 
c) There are various alternatives available to putting 
in jail for minor offenders 
d) All of the above 
e) None of these. 
 
Direction (6-10): Five sentences denoted by A, B, C, 
D and E have been given. Identify the odd sentence 
and arrange rest of the four sentences in such a way 
that they make a meaningful paragraph.  
 
6. 
(A) The report, which summarized 2016 data for 
4,300 cities, ranks 14 Indian cities among the 20 
most polluted ones globally. 
(B) In 2016 alone, it says, around 4.2 million people 
died owing to outdoor air pollution, while 3.8 million 
                                      
    
 
 
                          
people succumbed to dirty cooking fuels such as 
wood and cow dung.  
(C) All the countries in their region are making efforts 
to expand the availability of clean fuel and 
technologies. 
(D) A new report from the World Health Organisation 
highlights not only how widespread air pollution is in 
urban India, but also how deficient air quality 
monitoring is. 
(E) The report puts the global death toll from air 
pollution at seven million a year, attributable to 
illnesses such as lung cancer, pneumonia and 
ischemic heart disease. 
a) BEAC 
b) ADEC 
c) CAEB 
d) EBDA 
e) DAEB 
 
 
7. 
(A) “This situation would not have arisen if the ASI 
had done its job”, bench of Justices told Additional 
Solicitor General. 
(B) The counsel for ASI told the court that the 
problem of insects was due to stagnation of water of 
river Yamuna. 
(C) The Supreme Court on Wednesday came down 
heavily on the Archological Survey of Indian for its 
failure to take appropriate steps to protect and 
preserve the iconic Taj Mahal. 
(D) “It also added, “we are surprised at the way ASI is 
defending itself and Centre please consider if the ASI 
is needed there or not”. 
(E) The apex court also expressed concern over Taj 
Mahal being infected by insects and asked the 
authorities, including the ASI, what steps they have 
taken to prevent this. 
a) BEAC 
b) DAEC 
c) CEAD 
d) EBDA 
e) ADCE 
 
8.  
(A) If a salaried individual earns income from other 
sources then they have to pay advance tax too. 
(B) Advance tax is the tax payable on total income of 
the year earned from different sources including 
salary, business, profession, rent, etc.  
(C) Advance tax is applicable to individuals who earn 
income from sources other than salary like Interest 
earned on fixed deposits, Income received via capital 
gains on shares etc. 
 
(D) Advance tax can be paid through tax payment 
challans at bank branches which are authorised by 
the Income Tax department.  
(E) Salaried individuals need not pay advance tax as 
they already pay tax at source because their 
employer deducts the tax at source. 
a) EBAC 
                                      
    
 
 
                          
b) DAEC 
c) CAEB 
d) BECA 
e) ADCE 
 
9.  
(A) In his inaugural speech, Mr. Putin said he would 
stay focused on domestic issues in his new term, 
particularly the economy, which has just recovered 
from a painful recession. 
(B) Mr. Putin presents himself as a strongman 
seeking to restore Russia’s lost glory. 
(C) Vladimir Putin, who has maintained a tight grip on 
power in Russia for almost two decades, begins his 
fourth term as president at a time when the country is 
going through a difficult period, economically and 
diplomatically. 
(D) Mr. Putin’s muscular foreign policy is a more solid 
source of public support for him.  
(E) In the March presidential election he won 77% of 
the popular vote, the largest margin for any post-
Soviet leader.  
a) BEAC 
b) CEAD 
c) ADEB 
d) EBDA 
e) ADCE 
 
10.  
(A) This tax could be paid either to the local state 
government or Municipal Corporation, depending on 
government policies. 
(B) Every property is an asset which is taxable and 
the property tax is an annual amount paid by a 
property/land owner to the government.  
(C)  This tax amount is used to develop local 
amenities including road repairs, maintenance of 
parks and public schools, etc.  
(D) Taxes are the primary source of income for a 
government and it dictate about the resources 
available to citizens. 
(E) The word “property” in this context refers to all 
tangible real estate under the ownership of an 
individual and includes houses, office buildings and 
premises rented to third parties. 
a) BEAC 
b) DAEC 
c) CAEB 
d) DBAE 
e) ADCE 
 
Directions (11-15): In the questions given below, 
there is a sentence in which one part is given in bold. 
The part given in bold may or may not be 
grammatically correct. Choose the best alternative 
among the four given which can replace the part in 
bold to make the sentence grammatically correct. If 
the part given in bold is already correct and does not 
require any replacement, choose option (e), i.e. “No 
replacement required” as your answer