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For other uses, see Jail (disambiguation).

Jail, or gaol (especially in Canada, Australia and NZ[1]), remand prison, is a correctional institution used to detain persons who are in the lawful custody of the state. This includes either accused persons awaiting trial or for those who have been convicted of a crime and are serving a sentence of less than one year. Jails are generally small penitentiaries run by individual counties and cities, though some jails in larger communities may be as large and hold as many inmates as regular prisons. "Jail" is also a synonym for "prison" in most countries (excluding the United States), especially when the facility is of a similar size as a correctional facility. As with prisons, some jails have different wings for certain types of offenders, and have work programs for inmates who demonstrate good behavior.

Resocialization

Main article: Resocialization

Resocialization is a sociological concept dealing with the process of mentally and emotionally "re-training" a person so that he or she can operate in an environment other than that which he or she is accustomed to. Resocialization into a total institution involves a complete change of personality. Key examples include the process of resocializing new recruits into the military so that they can operate as soldiers (or, in other words, as members of a cohesive unit) and the reverse process, in which those who have become accustomed to such roles return to society after military .

United States

Jails in the United States are different from prisons. Jails are typically operated by city or county governments, and house prisoners who are being detained before trial or serving sentences less than one year.. Approximately half of the U.S. jail population consists of pretrial detainees who have not been convicted or sentenced. Prisoners serving terms longer than one year are typically housed in correctional facilities operated by state governments. Unlike most state prisons, a jail usually houses both men and women in separate portions of the same facility. Some jails lease space to house inmates from the federal government, state prisons or from other counties for profit.

In 2005, a report by the Bureau of Justice Statistics found that 62 percent of people in jails have not been convicted, meaning many of them are awaiting trial. As of 2005, local jails held or supervised 819,434 individuals. Nine percent of these individuals were in programs such as community service, work release, weekend reporting, electronic monitoring, and other alternative programs.

In the United States, as compared to regular 'mainline' state and federal prisons, in which prisoners have already been investigated and classified by corrections personnel before being assigned to a level of security, in which many of the prisoners are committed for longer periods of time, and in which the population is on average older, jails usually house prisoners who are on average younger and have varying or unknown histories and propensities for violence or disciplinary problems. As a result, many jails operate their booking and receiving units at a relatively high level of correctional security, and also witness a disproportionately large amount of violence and disciplinary problems as compared to mainline facilities.

Gaol

Gaol is an early Modern English spelling for jail with the same pronunciation and meaning. Although jail is now more common, gaol is still the favoured spelling in parts of the Commonwealth of Nations, for example in Australia. However, due to American influence in Australia , the spelling "jail" is now more common in popular contexts such as the media, the spelling "gaol" being mainly retained in historical use and in the legal profession. Canada, also a part of the Commonwealth, has made a similar transition in usage.

"Gaol" also remains in use as the standard spelling of "jail" in Ireland, but note that it typically applies to defunct English-run gaols from the English occupation of Ireland. The word has strong historical connotations of unjust imprisonment in Ireland, and if an Irish person says someone is "in gaol" (or "in jail") rather than "in prison", they may be hinting that they consider the imprisonment unjust, a distinction that may be unnoticed by non-Hiberno-English speakers. In turn, Irish English-speakers may also invalidly assume that English speakers from other nations are making that distinction. "Prison" and "Detention Centre" are typically used for extant Irish-run incarceration facilities. The English-built but still in-use Mountjoy Gaol was renamed to Mountjoy Prison.

The Oxford English Dictionary states that "gaol" comes from the Norman French spelling gaiole down to the 17th century as gaile. It remains in written form in the archaic spelling gaol mainly through statutory and official tradition. The only remaining spoken pronunciation is jail (/dʒeɪl/), from the Old Parisian French word jaiole. In modern French, the word geôle is still used in literary contexts to refer to jail.

From the 16th until the 18th centuries the word goal(e) was used widely, possibly as an erroneous spelling of gaol, or possibly an unusual phonetic spelling.

Tim Moore in his book on Monopoly "Do Not Pass Go" suggests that, in Britain, the change from "gaol" to "jail" was precipitated by the popularity and spread of Monopoly in the 1930s and '40s. The non-London specific squares and cards had been copied wholesale from the original Atlantic City version where the spelling "jail" was commonplace. It is also for this reason that the policeman on the "Go to Jail" square features a clearly American uniform in contrast to the traditional style British police helmet.

External links

• Brian Dawe, Behind The Walls, Corrections Connection
• Ann Coppola, View from 35,000 Feet: Prison Overcrowding, Corrections Connection
• Joe Bouchard, Daily Safety Concerns in Jails, Corrections Connection
• PrisonMinistry.net - International Network of Prison Ministries (AKA "Prison Ministry Directory")
• Criminal Procedure From Arrest To Appeal By Lester B. Orfield