page_title: Prison
section_title: Military prisons and prisoner-of-war camps
hierarchical_section_title: Prison / Special types / Military prisons and prisoner-of-war camps
caption_attribution_description: Guantanamo captives in January 2002.
context_page_description: A prison is a facility in which inmates are forcibly confined and denied a variety of freedoms under the authority of the state. Prisons are most commonly used within a criminal justice system: people charged with crimes may be imprisoned until their trial; those pleading or being found guilty of crimes at trial may be sentenced to a specified period of imprisonment. In simplest terms, a prison can also be described as a building in which people are legally held as a punishment for a crime they have committed.
  Prisons can also be used as a tool of political repression by authoritarian regimes. Their perceived opponents may be imprisoned for political crimes, often without trial or other legal due process; this use is illegal under most forms of international law governing fair administration of justice. In times of war, prisoners of war or detainees may be detained in military prisons or prisoner of war camps, and large groups of civilians might be imprisoned in internment camps.
  In American English, the terms prison and jail have separate definitions, though this is not always followed in casual speech.
context_section_description: Prisons have formed parts of military systems since the French Revolution. France set up its system in 1796. They were modernized in 1852 and since their existence, are used variously to house prisoners of war, unlawful combatants, those whose freedom is deemed a national security risk by military or civilian authorities, and members of the military found guilty of a serious crime. Military prisons in the United States have also been converted to civilian prisons, to include Alcatraz Island. Alcatraz was formerly a military prison for soldiers during the American Civil War.
  In the American Revolution, British prisoners held by the U.S. were assigned to local farmers as laborers.  The British kept American sailors in broken down ship hulks with high death rates.
  In the Napoleonic wars, the broken down hulks were still in use for naval prisoners.  One French surgeon recalled his captivity in Spain, where scurvy, diarrhea, dysentery, and typhus abounded, and prisoners died by the thousands:
  "These great trunks of ships were immense coffins, in which living men were consigned to a slow death.... [In the hot weather we had] black army bread full of gritty particles, biscuit full of maggots, salt meat that was already decomposing, rancid lard, spoiled cod, [and] stale rice, peas, and beans."
  In the American Civil War, at first prisoners of war were released, after they promised not to fight again unless formally exchanged.  When the Confederacy refused to exchange black prisoners the system broke down, and each side built large-scale POW camps.  Conditions in terms of housing, food, and medical care were bad in the Confederacy, and the Union retaliated by imposing harsh conditions.
  By 1900 the legal framework of the Geneva and Hague Convention provided considerable protection. In the First World War, millions of prisoners were held on both sides, with no major atrocities. Officers received privileged treatment. There was an increase in the use of forced labor throughout Europe. Food and medical treatment were generally comparable to what active duty soldiers received, and housing was much better than front-line conditions.
caption: Captives at Camp X-Ray, Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, a United States military prison where people are being indefinitely detained in solitary confinement as part of the "War on Terror" (January 2002). The prisoners are forced to wear goggles and headphones for sensory deprivation and to prevent them from communicating with other prisoners.
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