Ancient Athens jailed people who could not pay fines, then had to add limits
In classical Athens, imprisonment was a common fate for people unable to pay their fines. Because poor citizens often could never pay, they faced being locked up indefinitely, so time limits were eventually set. Around then, Plato and other philosophers were floating a radical idea: punishment should reform offenders rather than simply exact revenge.
Prisons emerged with the state itself. The Romans were among the first to treat imprisonment as punishment rather than mere holding, using cages, basements and quarries. The best known, the Mamertine Prison, is said to have been founded around 640 BC by Ancus Marcius. In the medieval Songhai Empire, a trial could end in confiscated goods or time in one of several prisons, and in medieval Europe castles, fortresses and cellars served as makeshift jails. The power to imprison signalled who held authority.
In England and Wales, houses of correction were set up under the Poor Relief Act 1601 to put the idle poor and vagrants to hard labour. Later they also punished minor crimes and held people before trial, while workhouses and then public assistance took over care of the poor. The Gaols Act 1823 recognised two kinds of institution, gaols and houses of correction.
Vocabulary varies from country to country. Americans usually distinguish a jail, run locally, often by a county sheriff, for short sentences under a year or for pre-trial detention, from a prison or penitentiary run by state or federal government for long terms. Australia still uses gaol, jail and prison, and many old gaols, including Maitland Gaol, are now tourist attractions, while New South Wales and Queensland officially say correctional centre. Canada prefers terms such as institution or penitentiary, and in Papua New Guinea prison is the official word though jail is more common. In Britain and Ireland, gaol survives mainly in older and legal texts.
Prisons serve two main purposes: holding people charged with crimes until trial and confining those convicted. They can also be abused. Authoritarian regimes detain opponents without fair trials, a practice illegal under most international law, and in wartime states hold prisoners of war or intern civilians in camps.
Source: Prison
