User:Meysiramon/Evaluate an Article

Which article are you evaluating?
United States incarceration rate

Why you have chosen this article to evaluate?
The US incarceration rate article has synthesized the incarceration populations in the US. With direct interest and extensive research on incarceration within the US, I believe I have more than general information about this chosen topic. Additionally, experiences centering the effects of individuals affected by the prison industrial system have allowed me to understand this issue in a much greater sense. Research conducted upon organizations aiming to abolish the prison system through campaign work, correspondence advocacy and prison visiting programs (through California Coalition for Women's Prisoners) has helped illuminate this issue as well.

Evaluate the article
Lead Section

The article's lead sections and sub-sector topics allow for the article to be digestible to any reader looking to pinpoint specific information about incarceration. An in depth evaluation of the article demonstrates how the different titles are according to the content. One lead that I believe could be expanded upon include the "Drug Sentencing Laws' ' where the portion of The War on Drugs simply because it is a lengthy portion of the section. This would include the first two paragraphs of the section.

Content

The content of the article is relevant to the main topic as most of it is centered on incarceration rates within the US. I do feel that an additional section regarding the impacts of COVID-19 and incarceration rates might be relevant to the increase or decrease of rates. I believe that the information currently present is slightly outdated in the sense of a lack of the impacts of the pandemic.

Tone and Balance

The tone of the overall article is very straightforward and concise. Lack of balance might be in the last section of "Citizenship Statistics" where only a few sentences are provided, creating an imbalance of information through the whole article.

Sources and References

It is important to note that there are about 99 citations in this entire article which might be due to the length of the article itself. I reviewed the quality of the actual data that illustrates upon numbers and percentages and found that most of the data used is retrieved from sources such as the US Dept of Justice, The Bureau of Justice Studies and US Immigration and Customs Enforcement. All of which are government based sources.

The images and media in this wikipedia article are bounded by data, graphs and maps. There is no additional media content that would suggest a different topic. The main cover of this article is a map highlighting the adult incarceration rate (per 100,000) by state.

Organizations and Writing Quality

Images and Media

The organizational aspect of "Comparisons with other ‘countries' and "Causes' ' should be reorganized to the end of this article. Its placement between "Growth and Subsequent Decline" and "Economic and age contributions' ' is oddly fitting and feels as if it is not cohesive. It should also be noted that this specific article aims to discuss the incarceration rates in the United States, having the first few paragraphs be an international comparison feels ill-fitting.

Overall Impression

The article's overall strength is strong. While the article could be improved upon specific rewording and organization of relevant information, a large majority of the article deems to be credible with the numerous sources. The data points and graphs also provide information in a way that is readable and understandable.