prison systems
State detention networks
Prison systems are the networks of institutions, policies, and practices that societies use to incarcerate people convicted of crimes.
The term encompasses everything from individual facilities to broader frameworks of sentencing, rehabilitation, and oversight: The American prison system incarcerates more people per capita than any other developed nation.
Discussion of prison systems often involves debates about punishment versus rehabilitation, private versus public operation, and racial or economic disparities in incarceration rates.
- wrongful convictionsErroneous guilty verdicts
- cell blockPrison housing unit
- guardWatchful defensive attention
- correctional facilityInstitution housing convicted offenders
- racial disparitiesUnequal outcomes between groups
inmate · cell · recidivism · mass incarceration · work release · doing time · behind bars · yard · vocational training · penal code · sentencing guidelines · life sentence · early release · job placement services · maximum security · warden · educational programs · penitentiary
- prisonsinmates, cells, prisons, prisoner, penitentiary
- law and societysocial control, legal institutions, legal systems, social order, rule of law
- Latin American lawcommunity justice
prison systemsrehabilitation programs
Structured return-to-function efforts
restorative justice · treatment centers · reentry programs · amnesty · pardons
prison systemsfreedom
Absence of constraint
liberty · open society · emancipation · release · civilian life
prison systemsabolition
Formal discontinuation of practice
decarceration · truth and reconciliation · restorative justice · restorative practices · amnesty