I read a review for this doc that spoke about the untrustworthiness of the documentarian due to statistics that were listed in the doc that did not match that of the department of justice. It took my about 5 minutes to clear up the differing statistics. The commenter mentioned that the film lists a 2.4M prison population as of 2014, while the DOJ's report released through the BJS states that the prison population in 2014 was 1.5M.
The glaring difference between the two figures is very easily explained through the requirements necessary to be included by the BJS study. Anyone who is in a county holding facility for a period less than a year, or anyone being held at an immigration detention center, civil commitment, or an Indian Country facility are not included in the figures stated by the BJS. The Prison Policy Initiative study states that 2.4M people were detained and incarcerated for a period longer than 6 months in 2014 with no other limiting factors applied to their study.
Checking facts is good, but is worthless if you don't check them well by corroborating multiple sources and reviewing the requirements and limiting factors applied to the statistical studies you are comparing. If you are only checking one source, there is no comparison happening, and you are ultimately just accepting the first response you came across without understanding what is included or not included in that particular study. That is called googling, not fact or source checking.
The glaring difference between the two figures is very easily explained through the requirements necessary to be included by the BJS study. Anyone who is in a county holding facility for a period less than a year, or anyone being held at an immigration detention center, civil commitment, or an Indian Country facility are not included in the figures stated by the BJS. The Prison Policy Initiative study states that 2.4M people were detained and incarcerated for a period longer than 6 months in 2014 with no other limiting factors applied to their study.
Checking facts is good, but is worthless if you don't check them well by corroborating multiple sources and reviewing the requirements and limiting factors applied to the statistical studies you are comparing. If you are only checking one source, there is no comparison happening, and you are ultimately just accepting the first response you came across without understanding what is included or not included in that particular study. That is called googling, not fact or source checking.