User:Carrington24/Capital punishment in the United States/Epickerill Peer Review

General info

 * Whose work are you reviewing?

Tahjowens, Jalencjones, MichelleDiazPU, Sr1313, Carrington24


 * Link to draft you're reviewing
 * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Carrington24/Capital_punishment_in_the_United_States?veaction=edit&preload=Template%3ADashboard.wikiedu.org_draft_template


 * Link to the current version of the article (if it exists)
 * Capital punishment in the United States

Lead
It would be helpful if you added 1-2 sentences under the main section ("Among Races") giving an introduction/background to the data you provide and what the section will be about in general.

Content
The data in the first section ("Among Races") feels a bit choppy. Is there a way you can create more transitions between the data rather than just presenting facts?

Tone and Balance
There are some phrases that feel like they will not be accepted by Wiki. For example, "capital punishment became the legalized way for racist white populations to control Black people and install fear in their daily lives" feels editorialized, especially since theres not a specific citation backing it up. Maybe you could say that its one argument scholars have proposed and then give other arguments, or find a quote to use instead that supports this so that it is not an editorialized statement.

Another way to improve the balance could be by adding positions that politicians have taken to justify the disproportionate capital punishment rates.

Sources and References
I would be sure to cite things more often, especially when you bring up a new piece of evidence/claim. It's ok to recite the same source, even if the source is the same between one sentence and the next.

Your 9th reference, Move for Hunger, might not be the best source for the data you cite. It would be more effective to find a scholarly journal or government data about the length of incarceration and how it differs between racial groups.

It might be nice if you could hyperlink some topics to other Wiki pages. For example, lynching, Supreme Court Case Gregg v. Georgia, black codes, jim crow, mass incarceration

Organization
The organization was overall good, I think the ordering of your subsections makes a lot of sense.

There were a few places that I felt could use more clear writing or more explination. For example, "During the middle of the 20th century, a period of mass incarceration occurred in the United States. This caused the prison population to turn mostly Black by the 1990s whereas it was mostly white in previous years." This doesn't really explain why the prison population changed. It would be helpful to have a more thorough explanation of particular laws or policies that targeted black communities. Likewise, I think the sentence after that talks about overall increases in the prison population could be brought up into the excerpt above and then followed by information about the changing of racial demographics. Organizing by broader topic -> more specific topic seems more intuitive to read.

It would be helpful to go back through and make some sentences more concise. For example, "While historical lynchings disproportionately were of Black males, capital punishment today disproportionately still affects Black males." This sentence is a bit wordy and has a few contradictions that mess with the flow. Instead you could say something more concise like "Lynching was historically targeted at black men. Likewise, black men today are disproportionately subject to capital punishment."

Images and Media
n/a

Overall Impressions
Overall I think you guys did a good job combining your research into a cohesive section. The content and wording could use some tweaking but I think it's a great topic and you identified the major parts of it.