A correctional facility, detention center, gaol (Australia, Canada, New Zealand, Ireland, UK), jail, penitentiary, prison, or remand centre is a facility in which inmates are forcibly confined and denied a variety of freedoms under the authority of the State as a form of punishment. Prisons are most commonly used within a criminal justice system: people charged with crimes may be imprisoned until they are brought to trial; those pleading or being found guilty of crimes at trial may be sentenced to a specified period of imprisonment. Besides their use for punishing civil crimes, jails and prisons are frequently used by authoritarian regimes as tools of political repression, to punish what are deemed political crimes, often without trial or other legal due process; this use is illegal under most forms of international law governing fair administration of justice. In times of war, prisoners of war or detainees may be detained in military prisons or prisoner of war camps, and large groups of civilians might be imprisoned in internment camps.

See also

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