Mass incarceration is a controversial modern legal and social issue. In practice, it represents a form of punishment for unlawful actions. However, there is a plethora of opinions concerning the objection of different social groups to excessive imprisonment. It leads to a deficit of knowledge regarding the true state of affairs. Locating the appropriate sources is essential in ascertaining accurate information about mass incarcerations in the United States.
Overall, ten appropriate sources were chosen, which yielded substantial information. Statistics were provided by World Prison Brief, the FederalBureau of Prisons, and Prison Policy Initiative. Critique of the current prison situation was offered by UN Human Rights, Applied Social Psychology, UN Office on Drugs and Crimes, and Loyola University New Orleans College of Law. Finally, the scientific outlook was given by HeinOnline, Annual Review of Criminology, and Wiley Online Library. All of these sources are based on the prison studies data and are regularly updated.
The entirety of the research did not take more than an hour and a half. As all of them are online, the web search tools were utilized – Google Search and Google Scholar. Both these engines can set specific time frames, which allows for distinguishing outdated sources. The successful keywords included “prison”, “incarceration”, and “filetype: pdf”, while few useful results were produced by “data”, “convicted”, “The US”, The strategy for locating sources incorporated three areas of research – statistics, scientific data, and negative opinions to achieve the comprehensive picture of the subject matter.
Altogether, the process of seeking the necessary information has shown that the data is relatively easy to find. However, too much time was spent looking at statistical information. This was a mistake, which will be corrected next time because numbers and figures are meaningless without contextual expert explanation. Therefore, the most valuable lesson is that any subject matter should be approached with a strategy, which diversifies sources into statistical, scientific, and opinionated.
References
“Annual Review of Criminology.“ n.d. Web.
“Loyola University New Orleans College of Law.” n.d. Web.
“UN Office on Drugs and Crimes. n.d. Web.
“Applied Social Psychology.” n.d. Web.
“Prison Policy Initiative.” n.d. Web.
“World Prison Brief.” n.d. Web.
“OHCHR.” n.d. Web.
“Federal Bureau of Prisons.” n.d. Web.
“HeinOnline.” n.d. Web.
“Wiley Online Library.” n.d. Web.