User:Lfreeman333/Evaluate an Article

Article #1: What article have you chosen to evaluate?
Incarceration in the United States

Why have you chosen this article to evaluate?
I chose this as my AREA article to evaluate because my practice experience and area of interest is incarceration as punishment in the U.S. and the use of peer tutoring as a tool to lower recidivism rates and facilitate harm reduction. This article matters because it outlines how incarceration affects different populations/sectors, its history, features, and policies. It is also important because it compares incarceration in this country to penal systems in other countries. My initial impression of the article was that it is very detailed and full of information that I would like to explore.

Article Evaluation
The lead section of this article is very descriptive and detailed. The introductory sentence clearly described the article's topic and there is no information included that is not in the subsequent sections. The opening was well-developed but it left me wondering about the rest of the article because there was no brief descriptions of the sections to follow. The section is overly detailed and the content seems more like information that could have been included in a subsection. It almost seemed like a standalone miniature article, rather than a lead section. Also, there was no transition to the rest of the article so moving to the next section was a bit choppy.

Overall, the content was relevant, up-to-date, and informative. The article did not discuss the relevancy of structural racism, mass incarceration, and legislation that disproportionately affects marginalized groups. It also does not address the relevancy of the rise of incarceration after slavery and sentencing disparities. Citations were missing in several places. For example, the author presented claims that incarceration for Black people was decreasing and incarceration rates for Whites were increasing but did not provide a citation for that information. One of the gaps that I identified was that there could have been more discussion surrounding the contrasts between incarceration in state, federal, and private prisons. Some of the sub-sections under "Features of the criminal justice system" seem out of place. For example, "Duration" and "Violent and nonviolent crime" would better fit under a heading that describes sentencing determinations. Also, I would suggest that more attention to the impacts of legislation be included.

The tone of the article is neutral and presents viewpoints from opponents and proponents. All of the information is described fairly and there does not appear to be any persuasive or heavy bias in the article. The author used a variety of current sources but missed the opportunity to include data from historically marginalized or underrepresented groups. While information from other sources can be added to this article, it would be better to further develop the article using information contained in the sources used. All of the links to sources and definitions in the article worked. Graphs, pictures, and tables were well-placed, appropriately captioned, and relevant. The writing was clear and the article was organized in an easy-to-read way. There were not any noticeable grammatical or spelling errors.

My overall impression of the article was that it was very informative, developed, and well-planned. The strengths of the article were that it had a lot of statistical and historical information. Most of the conversation on the talk page centered around specific areas of interest by evaluators such as impacts on the environment and prison operations. One area of improvement for the author would be to scale back on providing so much information and focus more on the flow of the article. Some other suggestions are not to use acronyms without first defining them, to carefully cite the information provided, and to expand the sections for prison types.

Article #2: What article have you chosen to evaluate?
Prison-to-college programs in the United States

Why have you chosen this article to evaluate?
I chose this as my SECTOR article to evaluate because the activity that I will undertake for my practice experience is peer tutoring and it discusses program models. This article matters because it gives insight into how prison education programs work, the history behind the practice, and their effectiveness. It is also important because it brings attention to prison-to-college programs, how public policy influences outcomes, the challenges they face, and the work they do to reduce recidivism. My initial impression of the article was that it was a good start but had a lot of potential for me to add information found in my research to it.

Article Evaluation
The lead section of this article is slightly vague and underdeveloped. For example, there are no brief descriptions of the article's major sections and it does not give a concise summary of what the article will discuss. However, it does describe the topic of the article.

While the content was up to date, a review of the article revealed that some of the content provided was not relevant to the topic. For example, the section titled "Felony disenfranchisement" talked about voting rights and spoke nothing about education. The overall tone of the article is not biased but it does seem pro-prison reform and in favor of education as rehabilitation. The article did not address the impacts of mass incarceration or racial and gender inequities on prison programs. Nor did it talk about the viewpoints presented by critics of education for prisoners which have relevance to historically underrepresented populations. Also missing from the article were program specifics on Adult Basic Education, peer tutoring, and technological challenges.

While the sources were current, thorough, and written by a diverse set of authors, there were many places where information was not properly cited and ideas were not fully developed. Terminology was not defined, sections were truncated, and much of the article centered around programs only in California. The organization was okay but the writing was quite choppy, sentences had missing words, and some sentences were long. The article did not have images but did provide working links to resources and definitions.

This article is currently not rated and it has a completeness score of 50. There was only one contributor on this article's talk page. The conversation was about how the original title did not indicate that the article's content discussed prison programs only in the United States. A new title was suggested and there was conversation surrounding the need to expand the article. My overall impression is that the article is a good start but is poorly developed. It can be improved by creating a good lead section, clearly defining the content direction, providing arguments for and against prison education, discussing the impact of social structures, and comparison of prison education programs in the U.S. to other countries or between states.