Prison

"Jail" redirects here. For other uses, see Jail (disambiguation).

For other uses, see Prison (disambiguation).

File:Female prisoner shackled in her small cell.jpg

A shackled female inmate, sitting in her prison cell

World map showing number of prisoners per 100,000 citizens, by country. The United States has both the world's largest prison population, and the world's highest per capita incarceration rate.

A prison or jail, is a facility in which people are physically confined and deprived of a range of personal freedoms, generally as a form of punishment that has been forcibly imposed upon them by the state. Prisons may also be used as a tool of political repression to detain political prisoners, particularly by authoritarian regimes. In times of war or conflict, prisoners of war may also be detained in military prisons, and large groups of civilians might be imprisoned in internment camps without being charged with a crime.

History

Elevation, section and plan of Jeremy Bentham's Panopticon penitentiary, drawn by Willey Reveley, 1791

For most of history, imprisonment was not used as a punishment in itself, but rather a way to briefly confine criminals until a punishment (often corporal or capital punishment) was administered. However, in the 18th century, popular resistance to public execution became widespread, and rulers began looking for means to punish people without associating the ruling class with spectacles of tyrannical and sadistic violence.

In response, the modern prison system was developed in London, influenced by the utilitarianism of Jeremy Bentham. Bentham's Panopticon introduced the principle of observation and control that underpins the design of the modern prison. The notion of prisoners being incarcerated as part of their punishment and not simply as a holding state until trial or hanging, was at the time revolutionary.

Britain

Britain practiced penal transportation of convicted criminals to penal colonies in the British Empire, in the Americas from the 1610s through the American Revolution in the 1770s and in Australia between 1788 and 1868. France sent criminals to tropical penal colonies including Louisiana in the early 18th century.

France

Penal colonies in French Guiana operated until 1951 (in particular, infamous Île du Diable (Devil's Island)).

Italy

After the unification of Italy in 1861, the parliament reformed the repressive and arbitrary prison system inherited from the predecessor absolutist states. The liberal reforms were intended to modernize and secularize punishment and emphasized discipline and deterrence, The reforms were not, however, extended to women's prisons, which remained in the control of Catholic nuns, Italian women's prisons continued to be modelled on the convent, with its emphasis on moral conversion rather than educational and vocational training. Italy developed an advanced penology under the leadership of Cesare Lombroso (1835-1909).

Russia

Katorga prisons were harsh work camps established in the 17th century in Russia in remote underpopulated areas of Siberia and the Russian Far East that had few towns or food sources. Siberia quickly gained its fearful connotation of punishment.

Prison design

Many modern prisons are surrounded by a perimeter of razor wire, high-intensity lighting, motion sensors and guard towers in order to prevent prisoners from escaping

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.

File:ADX.CELL.DESIGN.jpg

Design of a cell at ADX Florence

Modern prison designs have increasingly sought to restrict and control the movement of prisoners throughout the facility and also to allow a smaller prison staff to monitor prisoners directly; often using a decentralized "podular" layout. (In comparison, 19th-century prisons had large landings and cell blocks which permitted only intermittent observation of prisoners.) Smaller, separate and self-contained housing units known as "pods" or "modules" are designed to hold 16 to 50 prisoners and are arranged around exercise yards or support facilities in a decentralized "campus" pattern. A small number of prison officers, sometimes a single officer, supervise each pod. The pods contain tiers of cells arranged around a central control station or desk from which a single officer can monitor all the cells and the entire pod, control cell doors and communicate with the rest of the prison.

Pods may be designed for high-security "indirect supervision", in which officers in segregated and sealed control booths monitor smaller numbers of prisoners confined to their cells. An alternative is "direct supervision", in which officers work within the pod and directly interact with and supervise prisoners, who may spend the day outside their cells in a central "dayroom" on the floor of the pod. Movement in or out of the pod to and from exercise yards, work assignments or medical appointments can be restricted to individual pods at designated times and is generally centrally controlled. Goods and services, such as meals, laundry, commissary, educational materials, religious services and medical care can increasingly be brought to individual pods or cells as well.

Despite these design innovations, overcrowding at many prisons, particularly in the USA, 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.

Male and female prisoners are typically kept in separate locations or separate prisons altogether. Prison accommodation, especially modern prisons in the developed world, are often divided into wings. A building holding more than one wing is known as a "hall". Many prisons are divided into two sections, one containing prisoners before trial and the other containing convicted prisoners.

Common facilities

In countries such as the United States, where capital punishment is still practiced, some prisons are equipped with a "death row", where prisoners are put to death under controlled conditions. Pictured here is the lethal injection room at San Quentin Prison (circa 2010).

The crowded living quarters of San Quentin Prison in California, in January 2006. As a result of overcrowding in the California state prison system, the United States Supreme Court ordered California to reduce their prison population (the 2nd largest in the nation, after Texas).

Amongst the facilities that prisons may have are:

• A main entrance, which may be known as the 'sally port' or 'gatelodge' (stemming from old castle nomenclature)
• A religious facility, which will often house chaplaincy offices and facilities for counselling of individuals or groups
• An 'education facility', often including a library, providing adult education or continuing education opportunities
• A gym or an exercise yard, a fenced, usually open-air-area which prisoners may use for recreational and exercise purposes
• A healthcare facility or hospital
• A control unit or segregation unit (also called a 'block' or 'isolation cell'), where prisoners are placed in solitary confinement to isolate them from the general population
• A section of vulnerable prisoners (VPs), or protective custody (PC) units, used to accommodate prisoners classified as vulnerable, such as sex offenders, former police officers, informants and those that have gotten into debt or trouble with other prisoners
• A section of safe cells, used to keep prisoners under constant visual observation, for example when considered at risk of suicide
• A visiting area, where prisoners may be allowed restricted contact with relatives, friends, lawyers, or other people
• A death row in some prisons, a section for prisoners awaiting execution
• A staff accommodation area, where staff and prison officers live in the prison, typical of historical prisons
• A service/facilities area housing support facilities like kitchens
• Industrial or agricultural plants operated with convict labour
• A recreational area containing items such as a TV and pool table
• An administration area where prison management and operations are located

Security levels

The levels of security within a prison system are categorized differently around the world, but tend to follow a distinct pattern. Most developed countries divide prisons into separate security classes depending on the inmate population and the security needed to keep them under control. Accordingly, most developed countries have classes ranging from the most secure, which typically hold violent prisoners and those judged most likely to escape, to the least, which are most often used to house non-violent offenders or those for whom more stringent security is deemed unnecessary. Below are some different examples of prison classifications from around the world.

United States

Main article: Incarceration in the United States

In the United States, "jail" and "prison" refer to separate levels of incarceration; generally speaking, jails are county or city administrated institutions which house both inmates awaiting trial on the local level and convicted misdemeanants serving a term of one year or less, while prisons are state or federal facilities housing convicted felons serving a term of more than one year. On the federal level, this terminology has been largely superseded by a more complex five-tier system implemented by the Federal Bureau of Prisons that ranges from low security "Prison Camps" to medium security "Correctional Institutions" and finally maximum security "Penitentiaries". Federal prisons can also house pre-trial inmates.

The exact classification systems differ between county, state, and federal systems. Some common types of prisons include:

• Supermax: As the name implies, the custody level goes beyond Maximum by segregating "the worst of the worst" in a prison system, such as terrorists deemed a threat to national security and inmates from other prisons who have a history of violent or other disruptive behavior in prison or are suspected of gang affiliation. This level is also used for non-terrorists who have been deemed too dangerous or too high-profile to ever be in a normal prison. These inmates have individual cells and are kept in lockdown for 23 hours per day. Meals are served through "chuck holes" in the cell door, and each inmate is alotted one hour of outdoor exercise per day, alone. They are normally permitted no contact with other inmates and are under constant surveillance via closed-circuit television cameras.
• Administrative: Administrative security is a classification of prisons or detention centers that are for a specific purpose, such as housing mentally ill offenders. These range in levels of security from Minimum to Administrative Maximum Security (ADMAX), as in the case of ADX Florence in Florence, Colorado.
• Maximum: A custody level in which both design and construction as well as inmate classification reflect the need to provide maximum external and internal control and supervision of inmates primarily through the use of high security perimeters and extensive use of internal physical barriers and check points. Inmates accorded this status present serious escape risks or pose serious threats to themselves, to other inmates, to staff, or the orderly running of the institution. Supervision of inmates is direct and constant.

ADX Florence is presently the only facility housing supermax units operating in the Federal Bureau of Prisons.

• High: The "Middle Ground" for violent crimes, High security institutions have highly-secured perimeters (featuring walls or reinforced fences), multiple- and single-occupant cell housing, the highest staff-to-inmate ratio, and close control of inmate movement.
• Medium: A custody level in which design and construction as well as inmate classification reflect the need to provide secure external and internal control and supervision of inmates. Inmates accorded to this status may present a moderate escape risk or may pose a threat to other inmates, staff, or the orderly running of the institution. Supervision remains constant and direct. Through an inmate's willingness to comply with institutional rules and regulations, increased job and program opportunities exist.
• Close Security: Close Security prisons are institutions which house inmates too dangerous for Low Security, but who did not commit a crime worthy of incarceration in a Medium Security Facility. These prisons are rare, as most inmates fall into either "Medium" or "Low" Security Classifications. These facilities are often located in separate areas of a Low or Medium security Prison.
• Low: A custody level in which both the design and construction as well as inmate classification reflect the goal of returning to the inmate a greater sense of personal responsibility and autonomy while still providing for supervision and monitoring of behavior and activity. Inmates within this security level are not considered a serious risk to the safety of staff, inmates or to the public. Program participation is mandated and geared toward their potential reintegration into the community. Additional access to the community is limited and under constant direct staff supervision.
• Minimum: The lowest level of security to which an inmate can be assigned directly. This type of prison is typically a "prison farm", or other work-oriented facility, and most often houses petty or "white-collar criminals."
• Pre-release. A custody level in which both design and construction as well as inmate classification reflect the goal of restoring to the inmate maximum responsibility and control of their own behavior and actions prior to their release. Direct supervision of these inmates is not required, but intermittent observation may be appropriate under certain conditions. Inmates within this level may be permitted to access the community unescorted to participate in programming, including but not limited to work release or educational release.

England and Wales

Main article: Prisoner security categories in the United Kingdom

In England and Wales, prisoners are assigned security classes when they are sentenced. Prisons are given security classifications depending on the prisoners they are designed to hold.

Thus prisons classified as "A" would typically house prisoners categorised as "A" at the time of sentencing, and would be designed with the level of security appropriate for that class. The categories of prisoners in descending order are:

• Category A: those whose escape would be highly dangerous to the public or national security.
• Category B: those who do not require maximum security, but for whom escape needs to be made very difficult.
• Category C: those who cannot be trusted in open conditions but who are unlikely to try to escape.
• Category D: those who can be reasonably trusted not to try to escape, and are given the privilege of an open prison. Prisoners at 'D Cat' (as it is commonly known) prisons, are, subject to approval, given ROTL (Release On Temporary Licence) to work outside the prison or to go on 'home leave' once they have passed their FLED (Full Licence Eligibility Date), which is usually a quarter of the way through their sentence.

The British prison system is also divided into "Open" and "Closed" prisons. Categories A-C are considered "Closed" prisons as prisoners cannot be trusted to interact with the public, while category D prisons are generally "Open", meaning that prisoners with a good record and who are approved can be allowed limited interaction with the public such as home-leave or a nominal employment.

Special types of prison

Juvenile

Main article: Youth detention center

Prisons for juveniles (people under 17 or 18, depending on the jurisdiction) are known as young offender facilities or similar designation and hold minors who have been remanded into custody or serving sentence. Many countries have their own age of criminal responsibility in which children are deemed legally responsible for their actions for a crime. Countries such as Canada may try to sentence a juvenile as an adult, but have them serve their sentence in a juvenile facility until they reach the age of majority, at which time they would be transferred to an adult facility.

Military

Captives at Camp X-Ray a U.S. military prison, where many people are being indefinitely detained in solitary confinement as part of the War on Terror (January 2002). While awaiting their interrogation, the prisoners are forced to wear goggles and headphones for sensory deprivation and to prevent them from communicating with other prisoners.

Main article: Military prison

Prisons have formed part of military systems since the French Revolution. France set up its system in 1796. They were modernized in 1852, They 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. Military prisons in the United States have also been converted to civilian prisons, to include Alcatraz Island. Alcatraz was formerly a military prison for soldiers during the American Civil War.

Prisoner of war camps

Main articles: Prisoner-of-war camp and American Civil War prison camps

In the American Revolution, British prisoners held by the U.S. were assigned to local farmers as laborers. The British kept American sailors in broken down ship hulks with high death rates.

In the Napoleonic wars, the broken down hulks were still in use for naval prisoners. One French surgeon recalled his captivity in Spain, where scurvy, diarrhea, dysentery, and typhus abounded, and prisoners died by the thousands:

""These great trunks of ships were immense coffins, in which living men were consigned to a slow death.... [In the hot weather we had] black army bread full of gritty particles, biscuit full of maggots, salt meat that was already decomposing, rancid lard, spoiled cod, [and] stale rice, peas, and beans."

In the American Civil War, at first prisoners of war were released, after they promised not to fight again unless formally exchanged. When the Confederacy refused to exchange black prisoners the system broke down, and each side built large-scale POW camps. Conditions in terms of housing, food and medical care were bad in the Confederacy, and the Union retaliated by imposing harsh conditions.

By 1900 the legal framework of the Geneva and Hague Convention provided considerable protection. In the First World War, millions of prisoners were held on both sides, with no major atrocities. Officers received privileged treatment. There was an increase in the use of forced labor throughout Europe. Food and medical treatment were generally comparable to what active duty soldiers received, and housing was much better than front-line conditions.

Political

Main article: Political prisoner

Certain countries maintain or have in the past had a system of political prisons: the gulags associated with Stalinism in the Soviet Union are perhaps the best known.

Psychiatric

Main article: Psychiatric hospital

Some psychiatric facilities have characteristics of prisons, particularly when confining patients who have committed a crime and are considered dangerous. In addition, many prisons have psychiatric units dedicated to housing offenders diagnosed with a wide variety of mental disorders. The United States government refers to psychiatric prisons as Federal Medical Centers (FMC).

Population statistics

A graph showing the incarceration rate per 100,000 population in the United States. The rapid rise in the rate of imprisonment in the U.S. is in response to the declaration of a War on Drugs: nearly half of those incarcerated in the U.S. are there because they violated drug prohibition laws

See also: List of countries by incarceration rate

As of 2010, it is estimated that at least 10.1 million people are currently imprisoned worldwide. It is probable that this number is much higher, in view of general under-reporting and a lack of data from various countries, especially authoritarian regimes.

As of 2012, the United States has the world's largest prison population, with over 2 million people in American prisons or jails—up from 744,000 in 1985. That same year, it was also reported that the United States government spent an estimated US$37 billion to maintain these prisons. In 2012, the United States prison population was estimated at over 2.3 million prisoners, meaning 1 in every 100 American adults are in a prison. The cost of these prisons was then estimated at US$74 billion per year.

American prisons are overcrowded. As of 2009, California's 158,000 inmates were detained in prisons that were designed to hold 84,000—almost 14,000 of these inmates were sleeping in very tight spaces, or in hallways, or on floors. People are also being incarcerated at an increasing rate and new prisons cannot be built fast enough.

China's prison population is about 1.6 million, while the prison population of India is 332,112.

Alternatives to Incarceration

Main article: Alternatives to incarceration

See also: Prison abolition movement and Restorative justice

Conditional Sentences

Conditional sentences were first introduced in 1996 in an attempt to reduce the amount of inmates in a quickly growing prison population. Conditional sentences, which are also known as indeterminate sentences, are sentences that are served outside of the prison walls and in the community with some sort of restrictions or conditions placed on the offender. The requirements or conditions may include mandatory programs such as a drug or alcohol treatment seminars, curfews, house arrest, or electronic monitoring. Most offenders who receive conditional sentences are low risk and are usually serving time for impaired driving where no death occurred. When an offender receives a conditional sentence of home confinement in comparison to incarceration, the offender is still able to see family members, maintain a normal job, and attend school. This is a huge advantage to conditional sentencing, since offenders are not completely cut off from the external world. Although the offender is not locked away in a prison cell, the offender is still expected to stay at home during certain times of the day or night. In order to verify that offenders are abiding by the restrictions placed on them, electronic monitoring is often used. The development of GPS, which allows law enforcement agencies to know the exact location of the offender by the use of satellites, has increased the effectiveness of offenders serving home confinement sentences drastically. Offenders can now easily be identified and tracked down through the use of GPS allowing law enforcement officers to quickly move in to make an arrest when an offender is in breach of their conditions.

Restorative Justice

Restorative justice is an approach to justice that focuses on the needs of the victims and the offenders, as well as the involved community, instead of focusing on satisfying abstract legal principles or punishing offenders (such as imprisoning them). Victims take an active role in the process, while offenders are encouraged to take responsibility for their actions, "to repair the harm they've done—by apologizing, returning stolen money, or community service".

See also

• Prisons by country
• List of prisons
• History of United States Prison Systems
• Anton Praetorius (early prison reformer)
• Department of Corrections
• For-profit prisons
• Gaol fever (An illness commonly found in pre-industrial age prisons)
• Incarceration of women
• Inmate telephone system
• House arrest
• Jailhouse lawyer
• Kishka (prison cell)
• Immigration detention
• Life imprisonment
• Mental Illness in prison
• Penal labour
• Prison education
• Prison food
• Prison gang
• Prison officer
• Prison rape
• Prison reform
• Prison religion
• Prison sexuality (homosexuality and abuse in prisons)
• Prisoners' rights
• Stanford prison experiment

Further reading

Books

• Alexander, Michelle (2012). The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness. The New Press. ISBN 9781595588197.
• Bruton, James (Jim), Big House: Life Inside a Supermax Security Prison, Voyageur Press (July 2004), hardcover, 192 pages, ISBN 0-89658-039-3.
• Carlson, Peter M.; Garrett, Judith Simon, Prison and Jail Administration: Practice and Theory, Jones and Bartlett Publishers, 1999.
• Conover, Ted. Newjack: Guarding Sing Sing. Knopf, 2001. Trade paperback, 352 pages, ISBN 0-375-72662-4.
• Diiulio, John J., Governing Prisons: A Comparative Study of Correctional Management, Simon and Schuster, 1990. ISBN 0-02-907883-0.
• Gosselin, Luc. Prisons in Canada. Reprint. Montréal: Black Rose Books, 1988, cop. 1982. N.B.: Originally published in French in 1977 under title, Les Pénitenciers, un système à abattre. ISBN 0-919619-11-2 pbk
• Pisciotta, Alexander (2012). Benevolent Repression: Social Control and the American Reformatory-Prison Movement. NYU Press. ISBN 9780814767979.
• Jeffrey Ian Ross (2012). "The Invention of the American Supermax Prison". In Jeffrey Ian Ross (ed.). The Globalization of Supermax Prisons. Rutgers University Press. ISBN 9780813557427.
• "Imprisoned Mothers and Their Children". Women in Prison: Gender and Social Control. Lynne Reiner Publishers. 2003. ISBN 9781588262288. {{cite book}}: Cite uses deprecated parameter |authors= (help); Unknown parameter |editors= ignored (|editor= suggested) (help)
• Walsh, John P. (2013). "Conditions of Confinement: The Social Reality of the Jail Inmate". The Culture of Urban Control: Jail Overcrowding in the Crime Control Era. Lexington Books. p. 51. ISBN 9780739174654.

External links

• Interactive world map showing number of prisoners per 100,000 citizens
• Prison Radio
• Australian Prisons
• Russian Prisons photostory
• Historic Prisons
• Victorian Prisoners' Photograph Albums from Wandsworth prison on The National Archives' website.
• World Prison Population List (fourth edition) UK Home Office, 2003. ISSN 1473-8406.
• User Views of Punishment: The comparative experience of short term prison sentences and community-based punishments Research Report by The Scottish Centre for Crime and Justice Research
• Incarceration Reform Mega-Site (with 387 links)
• Norman Bruce Johnston Collection of Prison Architectural Plans, 19th-20th century (collection description), Lloyd Sealy Library Special Collections, John Jay College of Criminal Justice