A
prison,
correctional facility,
penitentiary,
gaol (Ireland, UK, Australia), or
jail 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. The most common use of prisons is 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,
authoritarian regimes also frequently use prisons and jails 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.