Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Federal prison


 * The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review).  No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was   keep. postdlf (talk) 22:56, 12 December 2013 (UTC)

Federal prison

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Sort of a procedural nomination. User:Jmeeter prodded this with the rationale: "This article offers no useful information, and frankly, the most useful information regarding federal prison can be found at Federal Bureau of Prisons." I think this is broadly correct, but problematic because federal prison is a very plausible search term, so deleting rather than redirecting is inadvisable. One solution might be to redirect it to Federal Bureau of Prisons, but I don't think it's especially helpful to redirect a general/universal topic to a region-specific one. Another solution would be to redirect to prison, but that would leave all the articles that link to federal prison linking to a term almost so vague as to be redundant. Among the many articles that link to it, I think some links could be removed, while others would be better if they pointed to the relevant region-specific articles. Basically, I'm not sure and am not advocating a specific solution; I'm just unconvinced that deletion via prod would've taken the complexities listed above into account, and hopeful that discussion here can find a better answer. – Arms &amp; Hearts (talk) 06:27, 30 November 2013 (UTC)


 * Speedy Keep There are numerous books about the US prison system and so the obvious answer is to read some and start editing per our editing policy. AFD is not an article editing service. Warden (talk) 21:49, 30 November 2013 (UTC)
 * The wealth of sources on the U.S. federal prison system is reflected in our article on the U.S. federal prison system (Federal Bureau of Prisons). This article is not about the U.S. federal prison system, it's about all federal prisons. Which of the speedy keep criteria do you think applies? – Arms &amp; Hearts (talk) 06:41, 1 December 2013 (UTC)
 * Keep. There are federal prisons in places other than the US, as the article plainly states. Clarityfiend (talk) 03:15, 1 December 2013 (UTC)
 * See WP:ITEXISTS. You're correct that there are federal prisons in places other than the U.S., but are they notable as a concept? – Arms &amp; Hearts (talk) 06:41, 1 December 2013 (UTC)
 * I believe so. There are certainly differences between federal and, um, non-federal prisons, as shown here and here ("The [US] federal prisoner population is also unique from the state prisoner population, most notably in offense distribution"). This US General Accounting Office report, "Federal and State Prisons / Inmate Populations, Costs, and Projection Models", gives separate statistics for the two. In Canada, federal prisons house inmates with sentences over two years, provincial ones the rest. They must be administered by different government agencies, with different regulations, etc. Clarityfiend (talk) 13:07, 1 December 2013 (UTC)
 * Well, yeah. I'm not disputing any of that. Information about federal prisons in the U.S. goes in the Federal Bureau of Prisons, while coverage of their Canadian counterparts belongs in Correctional Service of Canada. I'm struggling to see an argument for notability that applies to this article. Thanks for responding though. – Arms &amp; Hearts (talk) 13:50, 1 December 2013 (UTC)
 * It's a multinational subject, e.g. Prisons in Germany are all federal . There should be some overall article to cover it. It can't be a redirect, and a dab page would be rather inadequate. Clarityfiend (talk) 03:54, 2 December 2013 (UTC)
 * Nope. Alll prisons in Germany are state (land). - Altenmann >t 17:34, 8 December 2013 (UTC)


 * Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion so a clearer consensus may be reached.


 * Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, Mark Arsten (talk) 04:55, 8 December 2013 (UTC)


 * Keep No suitable redirect has been suggested, and it is a very likely search term. A dab page is not an option because of the need to explain the concept. The article is inadequate at present, but the answer is to improve it. There are other federated states to be included, and some general comments could be made on the concept. There is nothing inevitable about the US pattern - it is possible to have all prisons locally administered and offenders against federal law incarcerated there, just as there is nothing inevitable about having a local criminal jurisdiction. In both Germany and Russia criminal jurisdiction is reserved to the federal power but in Russia the prisons would seem to be centrally administered, in Germany not. There are arguments to be made for and against the concept - for example the regime in locally run and federal prisons might be different for people ostensibly serving the same penalty, a disproportionate number of offenders might come from one area but the cost of incarceration in a federal prison would fall on the centre, etc. A satisfactory article could be written with appropriate sources, since these things will have been discussed in a general way as well as on the specifics of the local situation. --AJHingston (talk) 10:59, 8 December 2013 (UTC)
 * If someone finds WP:RS which describes a common term, "federal prison" in international setting, they are welcome to write an article. In the current state it is 50% false. - Altenmann >t 17:38, 8 December 2013 (UTC)
 * I doubt the difficulty is that great. If federal prisons are prisons run by a federal government then it is a matter of comparing countries. In Germany the land run the prisons subject to federal law, in Russia the whole system seems to be federal, in Brazil there are a small number of federal prisons so it appears that the rest of the penal system is run by the states, in the US and Canada there are quite distinct systems. The relevant Australian article explains nothing. The problem is sourcing, but editors with the necessary language skills can solve that. Comparative articles in such cases are quite useful to provide a context, and national summaries may tell users all they want to know; somebody from outside the US wanting to know what a federal prison was might not want to have to read the Federal Bureau of Prisons article which assumes prior knowledge of the US constitution. Expansion can come with time. There is bound to be material on the merits of different systems since countries have had to make that choice. --AJHingston (talk) 18:36, 8 December 2013 (UTC)
 * An article about a supposedly "generic term" makes sense only when it goes beyond dicdef. Like I said, if one has sources, by any means. - Altenmann >t 19:33, 8 December 2013 (UTC)
 * P.S. While researching the subject I noticed that with the exception of the USA the topic of penal systems is covered very poorly. I guess only in the USA prison inmates have access to edit wikipedia :-) - Altenmann >t 20:08, 8 December 2013 (UTC)


 * Snowball keep, but turn into a disambig page, since (1) it is nothing else (2) there are no federal prisons in Germany, and (2) the definition is false (and unreferenced , too). I am doing this now, per WP:BOLD (self-revert per comment below; see my version). - Altenmann >t 17:23, 8 December 2013 (UTC)
 * Not a good idea in the middle of an AFD, and see WP:CONCEPTDAB. The US is unusual in having what are effectively parallel penal systems and as pointed out there are differences in approach, not just different examples. --AJHingston (talk) 17:45, 8 December 2013 (UTC)
 * OK. Reverted. As for CONCEPTDAB, see my comment to the previous voter. (oh, it was you; sorry.) - Altenmann >t 18:02, 8 December 2013 (UTC)


 * Speedy keep. Even without seeing the article, I can say confidently that deletion is a very very bad idea.  Deletion is only appropriate when (1) the content in the article doesn't belong here, and (2) the title is unsuitable for use as a redirect.  It's obviously good to have federal prison as a bluelink, and we don't need an AFD to decide whether to have an article on this concept or to redirect it to an article on US federal prisons.  Nyttend (talk) 20:58, 8 December 2013 (UTC)
 * Setting aside your apparent failure to read either the article or the nomination prior to !voting, which of the speedy keep criteria do you think is applicable here? – Arms &amp; Hearts (talk) 19:06, 9 December 2013 (UTC)
 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.