Jails - Historical Perspective, Contemporary Jails, Jail Structure And Design Characteristics, Jail Populations, Characteristics Of Jail Inmates
prisons prisoners trial control
Jails are locally administered, short-term confinement facilities, usually run by the county sheriff or city police, which typically hold persons awaiting trial or other proceedings, as well as convicted offenders serving sentences of one year or less. The transiency and diversity of jail inmate populations cause significant problems for jail administrators, and many believe that local control compounds these (Mattick, pp. 830–835). Yet local control and diverse jail functions have deep historical roots, and are not easily changed.
CASES
Bell v. Wolfish, 441 U.S. 520 (1979).
Brenneman v. Madigan, 343 F. Supp. 128 (N.D. Cal. 1972).
Jones v. Wittenberg, 323 F. Supp. 93 (N.D. Ohio 1971).
Moore v. Janing, No. C-72-0-223 (D. Neb. 1976).
Trop v. Dulles, 356 U.S. 86 (1958).
Additional Topics
Among penal institutions, the jail has the longest history. Paradoxically, it is also the one institution about which the least is known. Remote from public view and concern, it has evolved largely by default (Mattick, pp. 782–785). As a place of detention of the accused prior to trial, the jail is traceable to the earliest forms of civilization and government. Although there are no reliabl…
Fulfilling a multiplicity of functions, modern jails hold accused offenders, either not eligible for bail, or unable to raise bail due to poverty. Jails also hold persons waiting arraignment, trial, conviction, or sentencing. Jails furthermore detain probation, parole, and bail-bond violators and absconders. Jails house inmates for federal and state authorities when prisons are overcrowded. At tim…
There is no typical jail. Many jails are part of multipurpose buildings that also serve as the county courthouse, the sheriff's office, or the police station. Others are larger and self-contained. Although it is often charged that most jails are antiquated, the majority of jails were opened between the 1950s and 1980s. Although most jails are small, rural or suburban facilities, almost half…
Until 1970, no national data existed on jails and their populations. That year, the U.S. Bureau of the Census conducted the first national census of jails for the Bureau of Justice Statistics. Additional censuses have been conducted in 1972, 1978, 1983, 1988, 1993, and 1999; sample surveys of jails and jail inmates have been carried out in every noncensus year since 1983. According to the 1999 Cen…
In contrast with the growth of jail populations, the characteristics of jail inmates have remained predictably stable. Jails are predominantly repositories for young males, minorities, drug addicts, the mentally ill, the poor, and the down and out. According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics (2000) male inmates made up 89 percent of the local jail inmate population in 1999. Females made up 11 pe…
Because of the jail's function as the intake center for the entire criminal justice system, its population is the most heterogeneous and transient of any correctional institution. Recent data on jail inmate stocks reveal a distressed population, frequently in trouble with the law. (National data on the characteristics of jail "flows"—persons admitted to and released fro…
Until the late 1960s, state and federal courts refused litigation by jail and prison inmates against their keepers, preferring a "hands off " doctrine grounded in the constitutional separation of powers between the judicial and executive branches of government. This situation changed during the early 1970s owing to the expansion of defendants' pretrial rights and of judicial r…
The American jail owes its unique organizational characteristics to the fact that no single unit or branch of government has the power, interest, or resources to alter fundamentally a jail's purpose, organization, management, and operation.
Local courts and county grand juries are traditionally charged with inspecting jails. In some jurisdictions their visitations and reports are mandat…
The history of jail reform is replete with resistance to improvement. When John Howard first published his devastating but valid The State of the Prisons in England and Wales in 1777, the modern jail reform movement was born. Howard's purpose was to relieve the wretchedness of the people incarcerated in English jails. Since his time, ideas and knowledge have seldom, if ever, been combined w…
American Correctional Association. Standards for Adult Local Detention Facilities, 3d ed. Lanham, Md.: American Correctional Association in cooperation with the Commission on Accreditation for Corrections, 1991. ——. Jails and Adult Detention 2000–2001. Lanham, Md.: American Correctional Association, 2000. Bureau of Justice Statistics. Profile of Jail Inmates, 1989. NCJ 129097 …
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