Prison facts for kids
A prison (also called a jail or gaol) is a building where convicted criminals are held and incarcerated. Some prisoners are serving long terms or life sentence while some are waiting for trial. Those with short terms are probably locked up in a jail rather than prison.
Prisons are run by the government. Other words for prison include "penitentiary", "jail" or "gaol" (pronounced like "jail"), and "correctional facility". Some prisons or jails are called satellite camp, normal prison, special prison for death rows and maximum security prison. Inmates are forced to wear prison uniform with different bright colours from orange, blue, green and more depend on the prison. For instance, some prisoners who are prison workers might wear orange, or some prisoners with bad criminal records wear red uniform or vice versa.
A person who has been charged with a crime, but has not yet been convicted for it in a court, may be sent to prison if:
- the police have arrested the person and are deciding whether to send them to court,
- the court thinks that the person may not come to their trial,
- the court thinks that the person may be a danger to the community, or
- the court has asked for bail but the person cannot pay the amount.
People held in prisons are called inmates or prisoners. Those who have been sentenced to prison because of a crime are also called convicts.
In some countries, prisons are also used for political prisoners (people who disagree with the country's leader or government). In times of war, prisoners of war may also be held in prisons.
Images for kids
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A zindan (a traditional Central Asian prison) in Russia, photographed by Sergey Prokudin-Gorsky between 1905 and 1915
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A common punishment in Early Modern Europe was to be made a galley slave. The galley pictured here belonged to the Mediterranean fleet of Louis XIV, c. 1694.
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The beached convict ship HMS Discovery at Deptford served as a convict hulk between 1818 and 1834.
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Jeremy Bentham's "panopticon" prison introduced many of the principles of surveillance and social control that underpin the design of the modern prison. In the panopticon model, prisoners were housed in one-person cells arranged in a circular pattern, all facing towards a central observation tower in such a way that the guards could see into all of the cells from the observation tower, while the prisoners were unable to see the guards. (Architectural drawing by Willey Reveley, 1791)
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An 1855 engraving of New York's Sing Sing Penitentiary, which also followed the "Auburn (or Congregate) System", where prison cells were placed inside of rectangular buildings that lent themselves more to large-scale penal labor
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Prisoners picking oakum at Coldbath Fields Prison in London, c. 1864
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Shita (Shata) Prison in Israel. Many modern prisons are surrounded by a perimeter of high walls, razor wire or barbed wire, motion sensors and guard towers in order to prevent prisoners from escaping.
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ADX Florence is presently the only facility housing supermax units operating in the Federal Bureau of Prisons.
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A maximum security prison, the Clinton Correctional Facility, in Dannemorra, New York
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Inmate in striped uniform and restraints
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A minimum security prison in the U.S.
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The crowded living quarters of San Quentin State 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 its prison population (the second largest in the nation, after Texas).
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Inmate teaching other inmates in Kenya
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Juvenile prison in Germany
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Captives at Camp X-Ray, Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, a United States military prison where people are being indefinitely detained in solitary confinement as part of the "War on Terror" (January 2002). The prisoners are forced to wear goggles and headphones for sensory deprivation and to prevent them from communicating with other prisoners.
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Memorial to the prison staff who died in the 1971 riot at Attica Correctional Facility
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See also
In Spanish: Prisión para niños
