Jail and Prison?

Question

I'm from England. Here we have prisons. In the USA you have Prisons and Jails.
Can you please tell me what is the difference?
Thank you.

Fresh2:
We only have prisons and no holding stations. It has been known that some convicts have been sent to prison for just the one night.
Crazy I know, but there it is.

Answer 1

In most states ...

Prison is where you are sent after you are convicted of a felony, if the sentence is for more than one year.

Jail is where you go and are housed when you are awaiting trial (if you cannot make bail).

Jail (or house of corrections) is where you are housed if you are sentenced to less than one year in prison.

There are administrative differences too. For example, jails are paid for by the county or local government, while prisons are paid by the state. The County Sheriff is in charge of staffing (and paying for) county jails (or house of corrections).

Also, there are sometimes different rules for "good time" earned in prison. Traditionally, you got more credit for good time in prisons, but more and more states are minimizing "good time" in prisons as well.

As an illustration, in Wisconsin, if you got sentenced to exactly one year in jail, you would serve almost the entire term. If you got three years in prison, you would be eligible for parole after one year (1/3 of sentence). So, in a strange quirk, defense attorneys would ARGUE for 2 years in prison, which would mean less actual time served than 1 year in jail. The legislature changed this in Wisconsin (as in most states) so that either way, you serve most of your time.

There are other differences. Prisons are regulated by one set of supreme court rulings on "cruel and inhuman" imprisonment, so they must provide more recreation etc. than jails, which are by definition "short term" stays.

Hope this helps.

Answer 2

A county jail or city jail in the United States is a place of detention for people awaiting trial, or for those who have been convicted of a misdemeanor and are serving a sentence of less than one year. These jails are, in a sense, small prisons run by individual counties & cities. Some have different wings for certain types of offenders, and have work programs for inmates that demonstrate good behavior.

Jails also do not carry out executions, although the Cook County Jail in Chicago did at one time have an electric chair. Unlike most state prisons, a jail usually houses both men and women in seperate portions of the same facility. Some jails lease space to house inmates from the federal government, state prisons or from other counties for profit.

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 the legal penalty that may be imposed by the state for the commission of a crime.

Answer 3

Jail is where you go for short term: not more than one year or maybe 1 1/2. You actually stay in a cell with bars etc. Prison on the other hand is where you go for long term 2 years or more. It is more like a commuinty of convicts that live, eat and work together. You can even get schooling and an inside prison job to make money. That is the difference

Answer 4

Jails are operated by either the city or the county. They are a holding area for people who are awaiting to stand trial or those who have been tried and are awaiting transport to a prison.

also people convicted of a crime with a sentence less than one year can be sentenced to a jail instead of a prison.

Prisons are operated by the state and Federal government and house any convicted people that are sentenced there.
They will also hold some that are held on immigation holds.

There are many other centers like boot camps, a place for short term extreme treatment that is used instead of prison,
Detention Centers, normally for those that were on parole and were revolked and returned to detention and are awaiting a hearing.

Diversion Centers, lower secuity centers for people with non standard sentences

And there are Camps, where low level inmates are housed, many may not even have walls or fence merley a boundry line.

Answer 5

Jails are generally used for short term sentences, operated by a single city or county's jurisdiction, and have a much smaller population. Prisons, on the other hand, house large number of prisoners incarcerated for a wide range of offenses, operated either privately, or by federal or state, and their residents are usually in for a longer sentence (1 year or more).

Answer 6

Prison is more serious. Prison is for long sentences and serious crimes. Jail is bad, but not as bad- it's the first place an arrested person goes- they may get out right away. You can stay in jail for awhile too.

Answer 7

Jail is where you go if you commit a crime that is less than 11 months and 30 days, but prison is a crime that is more than a year long sentence. Of course any federal crime you commit, you go to federal prison and serve the calender years. Due to overcrowding and other factors, a lot of the inmates only serve a certain percentage of their sentence.

Answer 8

Think of a jail as high school and prison as college.
Jail is for lesser offenders or people being held immediately following arrest and pending trial. Prison is where they go if the crime was severe enough.
That's th best way I know how to describe it. I've never been and hope to keep it that way.

Answer 9

A jail is just a lock up ,a prison is supposed to be where the regime reforms the prisoners charter.

Answer 10

I think your question has been answered.

Still, I'm curious. Surely in England they don't put over-night detainees in 'Prison'. You must have some kind of temporary holding unit there. What do you call it, if not jail?