Confinement or imprisonment:
The word jail is Latin in origin and an alternate form of the word, goal (pronounced the same way), which has a Norman/French origin.
Whatever the spelling or linguistic origin, it is clear that places of confinement have existed for centuries.
Ancient Egypt, Greece, and Rome all had designated confinement facilities. It appears that as societies evolve from an extended family or tribal system into a more complex social and political system, there arises a need for local detention. Early confinement areas were characterized by "unscalable pits, dungeons, suspended cages, and sturdy trees to which prisoners were chained pending trial.
During the earlier part of this century, imprisonment evolved from a mainly short-term measure of penal confinement into a longer-term institution designed to effect the reform or deterrence of criminals. More recently, despite its pre-eminence in the general penal scheme, the institution of imprisonment has experienced a highly critical assessment; and, on the part of those actually administering the system, there has been an increasingly less sure sense of its functions and objectives, as the extract below seeks to show.
Now Imprisonment may take place before and during trial (for lack of bail or when no bail is permitted) and after trial as part of the sentence. In the latter instance, time served awaiting trial, during it, or awaiting sentence is recorded as part of total time served, and counts toward the minimum required in order to be eligible for release.
There are several types of detention facilities, or what have come to be known euphemistically as correctional centers or correctional facilities. These include jails, workhouses, and prisons.
Jails are places for short-term detention, Most of them are small and frequently overcrowded, have few if any facilities for recreation or even exercise. They house together convicted persons awaiting sentence, those sentenced to relatively short terms (usually less than a year).
Prisons are correctional facilities for longer-term incarceration, primarily of felony offenders.
The Effects of Imprisonment:
As already stated, prison population has been increasing over the past few years.
It's clear that prisons remain an important feature reaction to crime.
What of the charge that far from "correcting" criminals and preventing crime, prisons may actually be contributing to the rate of crime through their effects on inmates? In an age and country in which rationality is thought to rule, it would certainly be ironic if one of the major forms of punishment helped produce precisely what it was thought to prevent. The problem is essentially one of evaluating what really goes on in prison.
Prison means much more than mere deprivation of freedom.
First, there is a deep sense of rejection by the free community. Every day the inmate remains cut off from society, he or she is reminded of this rejection and the psychological toll is heavy.
Second, prisons are places of involuntary confinement that lack most of the amenities. The prisoner lives under extreme material deprivation In the larger society the possession and use of myriad goods and services is taken as a sign of one's status; not to have them, or not to be able to control their use, marks the individual as a loser, an incompetent, a person lacking worth.
Third, Deprivation of heterosexual relationships is a third pain of imprisonment. The inmate is "figuratively castrated by involuntary celibacy”.
Apart from physical pleasures there is the psychic pleasure that sex involves; both are officially denied the inmate of most prisons.
Fourth, there is the deprivation of autonomy, the lack of independence that is typical of "total institutions" such as prisons, mental hospitals, and military installations. There are rules and regulations to cover virtually everything. Seemingly, the inmate's most trivial actions are brought under the control of someone else.
The fifth, pain of imprisonment is forced association with other criminals, often for long periods of time and always under conditions of deprivation.
This involuntary association has many aspects, but those likely to be most threatening are those that undermine an inmate's sense of physical security.
Jails and prisons, have a climate of violence which has no free-world counterpart. Inmates are terrorized by other inmates, and spend years in fear of harm. Some inmates request segregation, others lock themselves in, and some are hermits by choice. Many inmates injure themselves.
Prisons are being filled with inmates who are aggressive, tough, or bitter. In addition, determinate sentences and tougher parole policies have reduced the stakes that inmates have in remaining nonviolent.
Being passive, quiet, obedient, and nonaggressive is no longer good for an early release.
Effects of Prison Life on Inmates
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