Jail and Prisons, Essay Example

There are a number of key differences that exist between jails and prisons, depending upon the nature of the circumstances that require this type of incarceration. To be specific, jails are typically located in local community-based settings, whereby there is a necessity to provide a location for suspected criminals to stay until they are sent to trial for their suspected crimes. In addition, “Jails are county facilities throughout the state which house two types of inmates. Inmates that are pending completion of their criminal cases house for community safety and for inmates who are serving sentences that are a year or less. The maximum amount of time someone can serve a sentence in a jail is a year” (Hoffman, 2010). Therefore, Jails serve as a means of identifying suspected criminals and housing them for relatively short-term periods (Hoffman, 2010). This is a means of keeping these individuals off the streets until it is proven whether or not they are a danger to society for one reason or another (Hoffman, 2010). Furthermore, “Jails also consider Good Time, Work Time which due to overcrowding reduces the amount of time served by defendants at these facilities. Typically the range of time taken off their complete sentences is from 30% to 90%” (Hoffman, 2010).

On the contrary, prisons are defined as follows: “State prisons, on the other hand, are federal facilities often used to house more serious and often violent offenders. These are for defendants that have already completed their court proceedings and have sentences greater than one year” (Hoffman, 2010). Therefore, prison systems are designed to house inmates that are sentenced to lengthier periods of time for the crimes that they have committed (Kitchen, 2009). There are many different layers of this system, and the challenges of managing these systems reflect the incidence of crime that occurs in today’s society. It is important to also note the differences between the offerings in these prisons, which will be addressed in the following paragraph.

According to Kitchen (2009), “There are far more amenities in prisons due to the fact that many offenders being housed in prison are serving much longer sentences. Common prison amenities often include exercise areas, labs to study and work, common areas for socializing and eating, libraries, churches or chapels and educational areas in which offenders can take GED or some college or vocational courses. Lower-security prisons often have offenders sharing cells as well as a complex political and social structure among housed offenders. Another difference between jail and prison is capital punishment. Jails do not house offenders sentenced to death nor do they have the capabilities to execute offenders.” These findings suggest that in essence, some prisons possess significant amenities that are designed to support rehabilitation of many inmates, in the event that they are released from prison for any reason (Kitchen, 2009). Although this might appear to be a difficult concept to understand, it is nonetheless a common practice in many prisons, which are also subject to extreme overcrowding in many cases (Kitchen, 2009). In this context, there is little room for new prisoners to fit, and therefore, the overcrowding phenomenon becomes difficult to ignore or to overcome without extreme effort on the part of the state where the prison is located. This is a difficult process to understand, but it provides an effective approach to identifying these key differences, and to making the changes that are necessary to initiate prison and jail reform throughout the country.

References

Hoffman, R.N. (2010). Differences between California Jails and Prisons. Retrieved July 24, 2010, from http://www.losangelesduilawyerblog.com/2010/04/difference-between-california.html

Kitchen, E. (2009). Difference between jail and prison. Retrieved July 24, 2010, from http://www.edubook.com/difference-between-jail-and-prison/16662/