User:Kari.Harper/Evaluate an Article

Which article are you evaluating?
Incarceration in the United States

Why you have chosen this article to evaluate?
(Briefly explain why you chose it, why it matters, and what your preliminary impression of it was.)

I chose this article to evaluate because I am passionate about the policy area with youth incarceration, specifically looking into the incarceration of Black girls and adultification. There are many social policies that contribute to this issue that could be explored, as well as discussing some of the other realities all children face in the carceral system. The content added could largely expand people's perception of juvenile detention centers and the work that still needs to be done in America. In this class specifically, we talk about the importance of intersectionality and how we navigate power in the world directly correlates to the policies that are passed. I obviously can't write to persuade, but i do want to show how intersectionality is an important framework to have when discussing incarceration.

Evaluate the article
(Compose a detailed evaluation of the article here, considering each of the key aspects listed above. Consider the guiding questions, and check out the examples of what a useful Wikipedia article evaluation looks like.)

Lead Section:

The lead section is to the point, condensed, and indicative of the issues surrounding incarceration of the united states. If one were to read and want to look into incarceration for the first time, this would be a good place to start. However, the lead section is not perfect. There are numeric breakdowns of the prison population by offense, but not very much precursor on the racial demographic of the prison system. Additionally, I could also say that this article's lead section leads people to assume that youth are left out of the equation. Youth are not mentioned until much farther in the demographics section.

Content:

There is a lot of up to date data in terms of adult cases in terms of the carceral system and a healthy section about the impact of having incarcerated parents on children, but startlingly little information on youth incarceration. This being said, young girls are largely left out of this article (Black girls, in particular). This is mostly where I want to do my research/try to edit the article. I want to try to add a more holistic view that shows how Black girls are being overrepresented in their demographic and how young girls in general are not often considered in discussions of policy being made. In relation, the section on education in prison is incredibly small, even in terms of the adult prisons. Smaller still is the mentioning of strip searches and I think that is crucial, especially as it impacts the mental health and wellbeing of an incarcerated individual- children included.

There also is no information on abolition... maybe too inflammatory but I think it could be important to the discussion of policy/politics/and the carceral system in America. I think as a whole, this article needs to focus more on the humanistic aspect of mass incarceration.

Tone and Balance:

There are no issues with tone as it all reads neutrally and abides by the Wikipedia guidelines, but the criticisms could be much more expanded on as well, but I could also see to how that could get construed as political/trying to sway. But I think it could still happen.

Sources + References:

Lots of solid resources and a decent further reading section. I could also see myself expanding on this as well.

Organization and Writing Quality:

I wouldn't change anything in terms of organization and the writing quality is easyn to follow and understand.

Images/Media:

The charts and older images seem appropriate, but I do find it quite interesting that the only picture used to discuss children impacted by incarceration was of a Black woman and a Black baby. Black people are the most overrepresented population in the carceral system, but not the most represented in prison due to sheer population numbers in the country. So I would want to look into removing that picture. The picture's title is "Grandmother and grandchild.jpg" and the caption reads: "Grandmothers are a common caregiver of children with an incarcerated parent" with the alt text: "This is an image of Cultural Fashion or Adornment from". I'm not saying this is intentional, but this also reinforces the mammy stereotype with a Black, older woman in traditional African clothes.

Talk Page Discussion:

Most of the recent discussions taken place on the talk page are done by other students. One comment also emphasized the large emphasis on economics rather than the humanity of the issue. This would be a good comment to look into.

Overall Impressions:

Status- B class

Strengths: The article is informative, mostly unbiased, and provides a good history on the carceral system in America.

Improvements: This article can be improved by highlighting the human stories and really expanding on the issues raised in the content section.

Completeness: I would call this semi-developed. There's hardly anything with children and they are still a part of this mass incarceration system, especially when they are tried as adults and go to adult prisons.