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Prisons in the United States are operated under the authority of both the federal and state governments as incarceration is a concurrent power under the Constitution of the United States. more...

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Imprisonment is one of the main forms of punishment for the commission of felony offenses in the United States. Less serious offenders, including those convicted of misdemeanor offenses, may be sentenced to a short term in a local jail or with alternative forms of sanctions such as community corrections (halfway house), probation, and/or restitution. In the United States, prisons are operated at various levels of security, ranging from minimum-security prisons that mainly house non-violent offenders to Supermax facilities that house well-known criminals and terrorists such as Terry Nichols, Theodore Kaczynski, Eric Rudolph, Zacarias Moussaoui, and Richard Reid.

The United States has the highest documented incarceration rate and total documented prison population in the world. As of 2006, a record 7 million people were behind bars, on probation or on parole. More than 1 in 100 American adults were incarcerated at the start of 2008. The People's Republic of China ranks second with 1.5 million, though China has over four times the population of the US.

Federalism

The federal government, states, counties, and many individual cities have facilities to confine people. Generally, "prison" refers to facilities for holding convicted felons (offenders who commit crimes where the sentence is more than one year). Individuals awaiting trial, being held pending citations for non-custodial offenses, and those convicted of misdemeanors (crimes which carry a sentence of less than one year), are generally held in county jails. In most states, cities operate small jail facilities, sometimes simply referred to as "lock-ups", used only for very short-term incarceration—can be held for up to 72 business hours or up to five days—until the prisoner comes before a judge for the first time or receives a citation or summons before being released or transferred to a larger jail. Some states operate "unified" systems, where the state operates all the jails and prisons. The federal government also operates various "detention centers" in major urban areas or near federal courthouses to hold defendants appearing in federal court.

Many of the smaller county and city jails do not classify prisoners (that is, there is no separation by offense type and other factors). While some of these small facilities operate as "close security" facilities, to prevent prisoner-on-prisoner violence and increase overall security, others may put many prisoners into the same cells without regard to the criminal histories of the prisoners. Other local jails are large and have many different security levels. For example, one of the largest jails in the United States is in Cook County (located in Chicago). This facility has eleven different divisions (including one medical unit and two units for women prisoners), each classified at a different security level, ranging from dormitory style open housing to super-secure lock-down. In California, to prevent violence, prisoners are segregated by race, ethnicity, and sexual orientation while held in county jails and in the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation's reception centers, where newly committed prisoners are assessed prior to being transferred to their "mainline" (long-term) institutions.

Read more at Wikipedia.org