Prisons Across America

Minimum, Medium and Maximum Prison Security.  Each developed for the, shall we say, "Strength of the crime", with Maximum being the strongest of inmate control.

About 20% of United States Prisons are multi-level, usually with tiers or floors. Each floor or tier is for a different level of security.  These prisons also include Super Maximum Security.  The Super Maximum security prison is actually the prison inside the prison and called control units.  There is severe restriction here and there is very little human contact.  These inmates are kept in cells about 6x8. They eat alone in their cells.  Leg irons are used when they leave the cell and there is exercise only once a week.  There is no socializing.  Less than 5% of United States Prisons are/or have a Super Max.

The majority of women inmates in the United States are in a women's prison.  About 1/5 are in coed prisons.  When this is the case, the females are housed separately from the males.  That part of the prison is sometimes called WQ or women's quarters.

As for the juveniles, these are criminals under the legal age of adulthood.  They are confined in juvenile correctional institutes or reformatories.  This is depending on the crime.  These facilities are considered state.  None federal.

Boot Camp or Shock incarceration is rather new to the US.  It is like military training at a boot camp. Time here is usually between three to six months.  It is usually for the young offenders, or those kids that are incontrollable.  This type of incarceration is meant to, lets say, "Nip the problem in the bud" before it becomes irreversible.

The best way to get a really good understanding of any prison's origin, is to take a look at the early development of the American Penitentiary system.  According to the Webster's Dictionary, the definition of Prison is:  Place of Confinement.

Punishment:  Crime had been a huge problem ever since the origins of society.  Some think that the state and religion came out of crime or "wrong doing".  Despite the beginnings of institutions for crime and punishment, Prison is a pretty new concept.  Before the nineteenth century, the ways to deal with crime and punishment was to use some sort of brutal corporal punishment like, Execution, flogging, mutilation, branding, and humiliation in public.  Confinement was saved for those in debt or for the accused or witnesses awaiting trial.  Also before the 1800s there was transporting.  Transporting of criminals to the American shores was popular before the 1800s and it has been estimated that about 50,000 convicted criminals were shipped to the American Colonies between 1607 and 1776.  The Declaration of Independence put a stop that business.  When the British found that they could no longer drop off their criminals on American shores, the Australian shores became the next favorable target.  The traditional form of punishment directed at the physical was redirected to the mind with the new modern form of punishment.  It was meant to reform the criminal as well as to punish.  The reform movement led to the modern day penitentiary.

It was then that blocks of barred cells came about and the first actual prison system.