A prison or penitentiary or jail (in British English, sometimes spelt gaol) is a building or system used to hold persons convicted of crimes. Many private companies in the prison industry provide services to prisons. In the US they are organized in the American Correctional Association. Their lobbying arm is ALEC which advocates legislation favorable to the industry. The practice of undergoing punishment via a prison sentence, is colloquially expressed as: "doin' time".
Mark L. Taylor, The Executed God: The Way of the Cross in Lockdown America, Augsburg Fortress Publishers, Publishing House of The Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, 2001, ISBN 0800632834.
All Wikipedia text
is available under the
terms of the GNU Free Documentation License
Search Encyclopedia
Search over one million articles, find something about almost anything!