What's the difference between jail and prison?

Question

I thought they were the same thing.

Answer 1

Prison is the big brother of jail.

Jail is for the holding of low security inmates and people being held for misdemeanors.

Prisons are for holding medium-high security inmates and people convicted of felonies.

Answer 2

I visit clients in jail all the time and some of them eventually have to go to prison.

Here is the easiest way to explain the difference between jail and prison:

Jail is a two-fold thing:
1. It's a Pre-trial detention facility where you await to be tried for the charges filed against you.
1. Once you have been tried, if the end result is that you got a year or less to serve, you do that time at the jail.

Prison:
1. Prison is where you go if your end result after trial or plea was greater than a year.

Answer 3

Jail and prison are not the same. For example, Paris Hilton has NOT been in prison, she has been in jail.

There are two types of jails. County jails and city jail. City jail is basically just a holding jail. People are sent there to the drunk tank after getting a D.U.I. etc. City jail sux because you have to where the same clothes the entire time. County jail is where people are taken when they are awaiting trial (unless you pay to stay in city jail, I'm not sure how that works. People like city jail because there is less "riff raff"). People can get bailed out of county or city jail (before they are sentenced), but not out of prison. If you are sentenced to do more than a year of time then you are sent to prison. However, people can be in county jails for years while they are fighting their cases, which sux. Usually the minimum prison term that people are sentenced to is 16 months. One exception to this is if they are doing a violation term (they broke the terms of their parole). Another way that people end up in prison for less time than this is if they have already served most of their time in county jail. Most people that have been to prison say that it is way better than county jail because there are more priviledges there since people are there for a long time. However, there are a lot of "politics" involved in each system. Generally, when somebody is on informal probation means that they do not have a probation officer and have not committed a felony. When somebody is on formal probation they have generally committed a felony and they have a formal probation officer. When people are released from prison they are on parole, and they have a parole officer/agent. It is however possible to be on probation and parole at the same time. There are lots of other differences as well, but this is the basic gist.

Answer 4

Jail is usually run by the County for holding prisoners before trial and incarcerating offenders of misdemeanors requiring less than one year incarceration.

Prison is State or Federal run. Generally prisoners who are convicted of major felonies requiring imprisonment longer than 1 year are sent there.

Answer 5

They are, generally.

Jail is usually used to refer to county facilities, which are normally intended for short term (under 1 year) durations. The term "Prisons" is normally for larger, state or federal, long-term facilities. So they are basically the same thing, but different words are used for different contexts

Just like "brig" is a military jail. Different tradition and context, different term. But basically the same thing.

Answer 6

A jail is for offenders who spend less than one year in confinement and it is usually controlled by the counties.
A prison is a state or federal institution where offenders spend one year or more behind bars. They also carry out the death penalty in such institutions.

Answer 7

county jails hold prisoners convicted of msdemeanors and should remain there for no longer than a year. they also hold prisoners on felony charges who are awaiting trial, upon conviction of a felony they go to prison for minimum of a year

Answer 8

Jail is temporary for pre-trial detention only and prison is where you go after you have been convicted and sentenced.

It is not true that people stay there for lesser crimes, etc. It is a temporary holding facility - like a doctor's waiting room. You stay there until the trial.

Answer 9

Jail is local.. like city jail or county jail

prison is State or Federal

Answer 10

Jail is for lesser crimes
Prison is for more of the dangerous ones...