Evaluating criminal justice reform during COVID-19: The need for a novel sentiment analysis package.

ABSTRACT: The health and safety of incarcerated persons and correctional personnel have been prominent in the U.S. news media discourse during the COVID-19 pandemic. Examining changing attitudes toward the health of the incarcerated population is imperative to better assess the extent to which the general public favors criminal justice reform. However, existing natural language processing lexicons that underlie current sentiment analysis (SA) algorithms may not perform adequately on news articles related to criminal justice due to contextual complexities. News discourse during the pandemic has highlighted the need for a novel SA lexicon and algorithm (i.e., an SA package) tailored for examining public health policy in the context of the criminal justice system. We analyzed the performance of existin

SUBMITTER: Ramjee D 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC9931240 | biostudies-literature | 2022 Jul

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature