Prisons

A prison, penitentiary, or correctional facility is a place in which individuals are physically confined or interned, and usually deprived of a range of personal freedoms. Prisons are conventionally institutions which form part of the criminal justice system of a country, such that imprisonment or incarceration is a legal penalty that may be imposed by the state for the commission of a crime.

A criminal suspect who has been charged with or is likely to be charged with a criminal offense may be held on remand in prison if he or she is denied, refused or unable to meet conditions of bail, or is unable to post bail. This may also occur where the court determines that the suspect is at risk of absconding before the trial, or is otherwise a risk to society. A criminal defendant may also be held in prison while awaiting trial or a trial verdict. If found guilty, a defendant will be convicted and may receive a custodial sentence requiring imprisonment.

Prisons may also be used as a tool of political repression to detain political prisoners, prisoners of conscience, and "enemies of the state", particularly by authoritarian regimes. In times of war or conflict, prisoners of war may also be detained in prisons. A prison system is the organizational arrangement of the provision and operation of prisons, and depending on their nature, may invoke a corrections system. Although people have been imprisoned throughout history, they have also regularly been able to perform prison escapes.

Other names and uses of the term
There are a variety of other names for prisons, such as a prison-house, penitentiary (IPA: ), or jail (in Australian and British English, the spelling gaol is sometimes used in formal contexts, although this spelling is pronounced in the same fashion). There are, also, many colloquial terms for prisons &mdash; such as big house, the Pen (short for penitentiary), the hole, beantown, stir, The Yard, can, clink, joint, jug, cooler, hoosegow, lockup, graybar hotel, concrete Hilton, lockdown, nick, pokey, slammer, up the river &mdash; and a similar range of terms for imprisonment, including doing time, bird,  doing a bid, being a guest of Her Majesty, porridge, working for Copper John, etc.

In the 1790s, the Quakers in Pennsylvania coined the term penitentiary to describe a place for penitents sorry for their sins. In the United States, prison or penitentiary typically denote a place where inmates go to serve long terms after having been found guilty of a felony. The United States is one country where the term jail generally refers to facilities where detainees are locked up for a relatively short time (either while awaiting trial or serving a sentence of one year or less upon conviction for a misdemeanor). In the United States, jails are usually operated under the jurisdiction of local (county) governments while prisons are operated under the jurisdiction of state or federal governments. In Washington some adult prisons are called reformatories, while in other states this is reserved as a term for a prison of the juvenile justice system. The term correctional facility has also been used.

Prison design and facilities
Male and female prisoners are typically kept in separate locations or prisons altogether. Prison accommodation, especially modern prisons in the developed world, are often divided into wings identified by a name, number or letter. These wings may be further divided into landings that are essentially "floors" containing up to thirty cells. Cells are the smallest prison accommodation, each holding at least one or two prisoners. Cells which hold more than three or four prisoners may be known as dormitories. A building holding more than one wing is known as a "hall".

This list contains the main facilities that prisons have.
 * A main entrance, which may be known as the gatelodge or "Sally port".
 * A chapel, which will often house chaplaincy offices and facilities for counselling of individuals or groups. Prisons may also contain a mosque (eg. HMP Stafford in the United Kingdom) or other religious facility.
 * An education department, which may include a library, and which provides adult or continuing education opportunities for prisoners.
 * At least one exercise yard, fenced areas which prisoners may use for recreational and exercise purposes.
 * A healthcare facility or infirmary, which often includes a dentist.
 * A segregation unit or "block", which is used to separate unruly, dangerous, or vulnerable prisoners from the general population. Inmates may be placed into segregation to maintain the safety and security of the institution, or the safety of any persons. Also, they may be segregated to preserve the integrity of an investigation, or when no other housing is practical.
 * Vulnerable prisoners units (VPs), or Protective Custody (PC), used to accommodate prisoners classified as vulnerable, such as sex offenders, former police officers, informants, and those that have gotten themselves in debt to other inmates.
 * Safe cells, used to keep prisoners under constant visual observation.
 * Isolation cells, often referred to as "the hole" in some jurisdictions, used to keep prisoners completely isolated, usually as a punishment for misbehavior.
 * Visiting rooms, where prisoners may be allowed restricted contact with relatives, friends, lawyers, or other people.
 * In some prisons in the USA, Death Row, which is a section kept for criminals awaiting execution.

Other facilities that are often found in prisons include kitchens, gymnasiums, and accommodation for prison staff.

Prisons are normally surrounded by fencing, walls, earthworks, geographical features, or other barriers to prevent escape. Multiple barriers, concertina wire, electrified fencing, secured and defensible main gates, armed guard towers, lighting, motion sensors, dogs, and roving patrols may all also be present depending on the level of security. Remotely controlled doors, CCTV monitoring, alarms, cages, restraints, nonlethal and lethal weapons, riot-control gear and physical segregation of units and prisoners may all also be present within a prison to monitor and control the movement and activity of prisoners within the facility.

Modern prison designs, particularly those of high-security prisons, have sought to increasingly restrict and control the movement of prisoners throughout the facility while minimizing the corrections staffing needed to monitor and control the population. As compared to the traditional landing-cellblock-hall designs, many newer prisons are designed in a decentralized "podular" layout with individual self-contained housing units, known as "pods" or "modules", arranged around centralized outdoor yards in a "campus". The pods contain tiers of cells laid out in an open pattern arranged around a central control station from which a single corrections officer can monitor all of the cells and the entire pod. Control of cell doors, communications and CCTV monitoring is conducted from the control station as well. Movement out of the pod to the exercise yard or work assignments can be restricted to individual pods at designated times, or else prisoners may be kept almost always within their pod or even their individual cells depending upon the level of security. Goods and services, such as meals, laundry, commisary, educational materials, religious services and medical care can increasingly be brought to individual pods or cells as well.

Conversely, despite these design innovations, overcrowding at many prisons, particularly in the US, has resulted in a contrary trend, as many prisons are forced to house large numbers of prisoners, often hundreds at a time, in gymnasiums or other large buildings that have been converted into massive open dormitories.

Lower-security prisons are often designed with less restrictive features, confining prisoners at night in smaller locked dormitories or even cottage or cabin-like housing while permitting them freer movement around the grounds to work or activities during the day.

See Panopticon for a historical prison design that has influenced modern designs.

Prisons and the criminal justice system
A convicted defendant will typically receive a "custodial sentence" if found guilty of committing a serious criminal offense such as physical assault, rape, murder, and acts involving circumstances of aggravation (eg. use of a weapon, violence, children), or has reoffended. In some countries, the law may require that courts hand down a mandatory and sometimes lengthy custodial sentence whenever a crime involves property, drugs or other prohibited substances, or where the defendant has previously been convicted (see mandatory sentencing). Some jurisdictions may hold a suspect in prison on remand for varying periods of time.

The nature of prisons and of prison systems varies from country to country, although many systems typically segregate prisoners by sex, and by category of risk. Prisons are often rated by the degree of security, ranging from minimum security (used mainly for nonviolent offenders such as those guilty of fraud) through to maximum security and super-maximum or supermax (often used for those who have committed violent crimes or crimes while imprisoned).

The issue of crime and punishment is a highly politicized issue. Prisons, prison systems, sentencing and imprisonment practices, and the use of capital punishment may all lead to controversy and debate. For example, the use of mandatory sentencing and the effectiveness of custodial sentences for minor property crimes is often debated, especially where the prison sentence required in such cases is more harsh than for the commission of violent crimes. Some of these issues are discussed further below.

Military and political prisons
Prisons form part of military systems, and are used variously to house prisoners of war, unlawful combatants, those whose freedom is deemed a national security risk by military or civilian authorities, and members of the military found guilty of a serious crime. See military prison.

Certain countries maintain or have in the past had a system of political prisons; arguably the gulags associated with Stalinism are best known. The definition of what is and is not a political crime and a political prison is, of course, highly controversial. Some psychiatric facilities have characteristics of prisons, especially when confining patients who have committed a crime and are considered dangerous.

Ecclesiastical prisons
It is plain from many decrees in the "Corpus Juris Canonici" that the Roman Catholic Church has claimed and exercised the right, belonging to a perfect and visible society, of protecting its members by condemning the guilty to imprisonment. The object of prisons originally, both among the Hebrews and the Romans, was merely the safe-keeping of a criminal, real or pretended, until his trial. The ecclesiastical idea of imprisonment, however, is that confinement be made use of both as a punishment and as affording an opportunity for reformation and reflection. This method of punishment was anciently applied even to clerics. Thus, Boniface VIII (cap. "Quamvis", iii, "De poen.", in 6) decrees:
 * Although it is known that prisons were specially instituted for the custody of criminals, not for their punishment, yet we shall not find fault with you if you commit to prison for the performance of penance, either perpetually or temporarily as shall seem best, those clerics subject to you who have confessed crimes or been convicted of them, after you have carefully considered the excesses, persons and circumstances involved in the case.

The Church adopted the extreme punishment of perpetual imprisonment because, by the canons, the execution of offenders, whether clerical or lay, could not be ordered by ecclesiastical judges. It was quite common in ancient times to imprison in monasteries, for the purpose of doing penance, those clerics who had been convicted of grave crimes (c. vii, dist. 50). The "Corpus Juris", however, says (c. "Super His", viii, "De poen.") that incarceration does not of itself inflict the stigma of infamy on a cleric, as is evident from a papal pronouncement on the complaint of a cleric who had been committed to prison because he vacillated in giving testimony. The reply recorded is that imprisonment does not ipso facto carry with it any note of infamy.

As to monastic prisons for members of religious orders, we find them recorded in decrees dealing with the incorrigibility of those who have lost the spirit of their vocation. Thus, by command of Urban VIII, the Congregation of the Council (21 September, 1624) decreed:
 * For the future, no regular, legitimately professed, may be expelled from his order unless he be truly incorrigible. A person is not to be judged truly incorrigible unless not only all those things are found verified which are required by the common law (notwithstanding the constitutions of any religious order even confirmed and approved by the Holy See), but also, until the delinquent has been tried by fasting and patience for one year in confinement. Therefore, let every order have private prisons, at least one in every province.

The crimes in question must be such as by natural or civil law would merit the punishment of death or imprisonment for life (Reiffenstuel, "Jus Can. univ.", no. 228). Innocent XII reduced the year required by the above-mentioned decree to six months (Decree "Instantibus", 2). A decree of the Sacred Congregation of the Council (13 November, 1632) declares that a religious is not to be judged incorrigible because he flees from imprisonment, unless, after being punished three times, he should make a fourth escape. As the civil laws do not, at present, permit of incarceration by private authority, the Congregation on the Discipline of Regulars has decreed (22 January, 1886) that trials for incorrigibility, preceding dismissal, should be carried out by summary, not formal, process, and that for each case recourse should be had to Rome. A vestige of the monastic imprisonment (which, of course, nowadays depends only on moral force) is found in the decree of Leo XIII (4 November, 1892), in which he declares that religious who have been ordained and wish to leave their order cannot, under pain of perpetual suspension, depart from the cloister (exire ex clausura) until they have been adopted by a bishop.

Prison population statistics
As of 2006, it is estimated that at least nine million people are currently imprisoned worldwide. It is believed that this number is likely to be much higher, in view of general under-reporting and a lack of data from various countries, especially authoritarian regimes. Since the beginning of the 1990s, the prison population in most countries has increased significantly.

In absolute terms, the United States currently has the largest inmate population in the world, with more than 2 million in prison and jails even though violent crime and property crime have been declining since the 1990s according to the Bureau of Justice Statistics. In 2002, both Russia and China also had prison populations in excess of 1 million.

As a percentage of total population, the United States also has the largest imprisoned population, with 738 people per 100,000 serving time, awaiting trial or otherwise detained. New Zealand has the second highest prison population per capita amongst developed countries, with 169 prisoners per 100,000.

In 2003, the United Kingdom had 73,000 inmates in its facilities, with France and Germany having a similar number.

The high proportion of prisoners in developed countries may be explained by a range of factors, including better funded criminal justice systems, a more strict approach to law and order (eg. through the use of mandatory sentencing), and a larger gap between the rich and the poor. In non-developed countries, rates of incarceration may be a reflection of a tendency for some crimes to go unpunished, political corruption, or the use of other mechanisms which provide an alternative to incarceration as a means of dealing with crime (eg. through the use of reconciliation).

According to the last statistics by the Bureau of Justice Statistics (October 2005, "Prisoners in 2005), the "rate of incarceration in prison at yearend 2005 was 488 sentenced inmates per 100,000 U.S. residents". However, if one adds the jail population to that number, 252, one comes up with the more realistic figure of 740 inmates per 100,000 residents.

Mean: Estimate of 197 (196.63) Median: 92 Ran*e: 696

Juvenile Prisons
Prisons for juveniles (people under 18) are known as young offenders institutes and hold minors who have been convicted, many countries have their own age of criminal responsibility in which children are deemed legally responsible for their actions for a crime.

Prisons in Australia


Many prisons in Australia were built by convict labour in the 1800s. During the 1990s various state governments in Australia engaged private sector correctional corporations to build and operate prisons whilst several older government run institutions were decommissioned. Operation of Federal detention centres was also privatised at a time when a large influx of illegal immigrants began to arrive in Australia.


 * List of Australian prisons and detention centres
 * Immigration detention centres
 * Mandatory detention in Australia

Prisons in Japan

 * See Penal system of Japan

Prisons in the United Kingdom
For information on prisons and related subjects in the United Kingdom, see articles on Her Majesty's Prison Service, on the United Kingdom prison population and the List of United Kingdom prisons. Also see house arrest.

Prisons in Canada

 * See Corrections Canada

Prisons in France
France has 188 prisons in mainland and the oversea territories. Statistics showed around 50,000 places on July 1, 2005 for around 60,000 prisoners.
 * official website : http://www.justice.gouv.fr/minister/DAP/etablissement.htm
 * official statistic (2005) : http://www.justice.gouv.fr/chiffres/chiffrescles05.pdf

Prisons in Germany

 * See Prisons in Germany

Germany has 196 prisons (of which 19 are open institutions). Official statistics showed 79,979 places on August 31 2006. On the same day, there were 77,166 prisoners (of which 13,233 pre-trial; 62,029 serving sentences; 1904 others, i.e. mainly civil prisoners; 4073 were female). This is the highest number of prisoners since 1990, when the first statistics after German unification were published. http://www.strafvollzugsarchiv.de
 * official statistics: http://www.destatis.de/download/d/veroe/fach_voe/justizvollzug06.pdf
 * strafvollzugsarchiv/prisons archive, University of Bremen:

Prisons in the United States

 * See Prisons in the United States

Prisons in history
The following are a selected list of prisons with well-known historical significance:
 * Alcatraz, San Francisco (historical)
 * Andersonville National Historic Site, Andersonville, Georgia (historical)
 * Angola prison, near St. Francisville, Louisiana (since before 1901)
 * Attica Correctional Facility, Attica (town), New York, scene of the most infamous prison riot in United States history
 * Auburn Prison, Auburn, New York [since 1816]
 * The Bastille, Paris, France (historical) In French
 * Butyrka prison, Moscow, Russia
 * Château d'If, Marseille (historical) In French
 * Carandiru, Brazil (historical)
 * Devil's Island, French Guiana (historical)
 * Eastern State Penitentiary, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania (historical)
 * Fleet Prison, London, England (historical)
 * Fort Jefferson, Florida keys (historical)
 * Fort Monroe, Phoebus, Virginia (historical)
 * Folsom State Prison, Folsom, California
 * Fremantle Prison, Fremantle, Western Australia
 * Hanoi Hilton, Hanoi, Vietnam (POW prison; historical)
 * Joliet Prison, Joliet, Illinois (historical)
 * Kilmainham Gaol, Dublin, Ireland (historical)
 * Kingston Penitentiary, Kingston, Ontario Canada (Operating continuously since June 1, 1835)
 * La Santé, Paris, France (historical)
 * Landsberg Prison, Landsberg am Lech, Germany (since 1910)
 * Långholmen prison, Stockholm, Sweden (historical)
 * Leavenworth, Kansas, site of a federal prison and the military's primary prison, the United States Disciplinary Barracks.
 * Lubyanka prison, Moscow (historical)
 * Maze Prison, Belfast, Northern Ireland (historical)
 * McNeil Island, Steilacoom, Washington (historical)
 * Newgate Prison, London, England (historical)
 * Peter and Paul Fortress, St. Petersburg, Russia (historical)
 * Rikers Island, New York City, US (since 1884)
 * Robben Island, South Africa (historical)
 * Sing Sing Correctional Facility, Ossining, New York, U.S. (since 1828)
 * Spandau Prison,West Berlin (historical)
 * The Tower of London, London, England (historical)

Cultural references to prisons and prison life
There are many famous work of literature describing or discussing prisons. Examples include:
 * The Count of Monte Cristo, classic adventure novel by Alexandre Dumas, père.
 * The Ballad of Reading Gaol, famous poem by Oscar Wilde.

There have been several films produced that depict prison life, including:

There have also been a number of television programs, including:
 * Le Trou (1960) Directed by Jacques Becker
 * Cool Hand Luke (1967) Directed by Stuart Rosenberg
 * A Clockwork Orange (1971) Directed by Stanley Kubrick
 * Papillon (1973) Directed by Franklin J. Schaffner
 * Stir Crazy (1975) Directed by Sidney Poitier
 * Midnight Express (1978) Directed by Alan Parker
 * Escape from Alcatraz (1979) Directed by Don Siegel
 * Ghosts... of the Civil Dead (1988) Directed by John Hillcoat
 * Blood In Blood Out (1993) Directed by Taylor Hackford
 * The Shawshank Redemption (1994) Directed by Frank Darabont
 * ''Dead Man Walking (1995) Directed by Tim Robbins
 * The Chamber (1996) Directed by James Foley
 * The Rock (1996) Directed by Michael Bay
 * The Green Mile (1999) Directed by Frank Darabont
 * The Last Castle (2001) Directed by Rod Lurie
 * Half Past Dead (2002) Directed by Don Michael
 * Let's Go to Prison (2006) Directed by Bob Odenkirk


 * Porridge (TV) (1974-1977)
 * Prisoner (TV series) (1979-1986)
 * Oz (TV series) (1997-2003) HBO
 * Bad Girls (TV series) (1999-present)
 * Prison Break (TV series) (2005-present)

Corresponding with prisoners
Corresponding with prisoners is very helpful to them, but carries risks for both correspondents - improper mail to inmates can cost them privileges (normally, all mail to inmates is read by prison staff). Use of a pen-pal service reduces (but not eliminates) these risks - as of 2005, there were more than 36 such services for U.S. prisoners alone. A unique service called PrisonMail.org was established in 2004 as a means to enable family members or other supportive individuals to correspond with inmates through use of the Internet. The Missouri Department of Corrections has stated that, as of June 1, 2007, inmates will not be allowed to use prison pen-pal websites.("Acting upon the recommendation of an Offender Fraud Committee he formed in 2005, Missouri Department of Corrections Director Larry Crawford announced today the Department will ban offenders from soliciting pen pals on the internet. The ban takes effect June 1st.")