Ever been in prison, jail or a juvenile detention facility?

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No, and if anything ever happened to put me there for so much as one night, I think I'd go insane. Seriously, I don't think I could handle it.

I have visited a family member in military jail ("the brig") quite a bit, but that's a hugely long story that I'm not going to get into here. Needless to say, that was NOT fun. I wouldn't have been able to do it without going with my family members that already knew exactly what they were doing (as far as protocol, etc). Those military guys do NOT mess around.

So is there any difference between "prison" and "jail"? Not being a native speaker of English, I always thought it's one and the same thing, only called differently depending on a region

Nope, never have and, hopefully, never will.

Penitentiary, gaol, jail, prison: Used interchangeably by many English speakers and have the same basic meaning - a place of captivity and confinement.

Yes, twice have I visited the gray-bar hotel. Very poor lodgings, can't recommend it. This happened almost thirty years ago. I had a GF who, looking back on her behaviour, was probably bi-polar. I was working as a cleaner for a department store, which got broken into. The policeman who saw the intruder through the front glass door said he had a beard, and was walking around like he knew the place. I had a beard, but was quite drunk that night. Nonetheless, the police wanted to talk to to me, so I told them to F*** off. They got a warrant to arrest me, but never served it. A few months later my idiotic alcoholic GF goes beserk in a pub. Police show up, take her to facility for loonies, and arrest me. I spent that night in the worst pisshole you can bloody imagine. Underground, ages old, packed to standing room only with drunken, angry scum-of-the-earth. I had to use the toliet, and started shuffling towards it when some dark skinned chap decided to vomit all over it, quite profusely. I held it until I was released the next morning. Couldn't sleep, couldn't even lay down. The drunks used all the wall to lean against and pass out. No water, no food, just more louts being shoved into the cell. I had visions of being in the black hole of Calcutta...

Dude. Johnny the Homicidal Maniac. F*** yeah.

I've been lucky. I've had many close run ins with cops.

A few times in school I did things that, according to the rule book, should have gotten the cops called on me. But they loved me so they didn't. Like that three blade cyclone knife I had in school. That was fun.

A neighbor of mine, when I was living in Pittsburgh, called the cops on me for having a marijuana seedling on my doorstep. I got home as the cops were standing outside looking for the right apartment. I whisked it up so quick they didn't see, and flushed it. I would've gotten like 30 years for that.

There was also the time I rode in a cop car with an ounce of weed in my purse. Drug trafficking at it's finest!

I should've been put away a long time ago, not sure why it hasn't happened yet.

only when i was walking near of our house and then got arrestet coz i migth be thief
of course i didint let em to take me easily and there was like 1hour chase but then i got tacklet by police and cuffet it was acsually fun

The way I've heard the words used, prison is usually a place where people serve longer sentences for more serious crimes. Jail, you might do a few days time, maybe a few months. Prison, years.

Thanks for explaining "prison - jail" controversy to me

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Nope, my sister spent a week in juvy but I never have

I was in a very low security jail doing work. I was always a law abiding person and never got in trouble with police or anything. I got paid for doing work there. It sucks for the guys who are in there - they put 3 men in a cell and you can walk from one cell to another. they put the prisoners together - all 50 of them - the hallway or the gym. the problem is that they are not protected form each other. so if a member of gang A is put in a cell where prisoners are in gang B, "is usually a group stomping" is how the director of the facility put it. if i ever am put in jail, i will do everything to be in a solitary cell - i do not want any "butt buddies"

It looks like I'm the winner (or loser, LOL) so far. I'm almost positive that I was there 6 times, but right now I can only remember 5 of them. Hmm....now I'll be thinking about it all night now.

One was a felony, the rest were misdemeanors, and the total accumulated time was 1 year and 2 days.


It's not a real exciting story, but, if anyone wants to hear how to be a dumb-ass, I'll fill in the details when I'm more awake (it's 4:35 AM).


Edit: It was only 5 visits. I added up the sentences, and the time adds up.

No, but I've had a few run-ins with cops, some more exciting than others.

May of the year of the last UK election (I forget which year??) - Tony Blair was in Scarborough and I was waiting in line to the theatre cos it was near my birthday and Mum was taking me to the ballet. So yeah, Blair was in his limo basically trying to get people to vote for him (fat chance, most of the locals here are Tories), and there was these protestors at the side of the road (I'm not sure what they were protesting, but they weren't very impressive). So there were these cops all around talking into those walkie-talkie things, so I borrowed my mum's phone so I could ring my friend and say that the prime minister and a bunch of protestors were there, etc, cos it's been my dream since, like, forever to be somewhere relatively newsworthy as the story happens. And I was so busy talking on the phone I tripped and fell over the police line and this police officer swatted me back over the line in an irritated way. Yeah, that doesn't sound so exciting, but I was young at the time and it was pretty cool.

Summer 2006 - my brother was pissing me off and Mum took his side (the argument was something about Sunny-D, I forget), so I packed my suitcase and ran away from home. I was trying to walk to my dad's house, which is ridiculous cos that's about 40 miles away, LOL. Anyway, about 5 miles up the road (impressive, actually, cos I hate walking), I had just stopped for a minute and was kinda gazing into the distance, and then I turn round and there's this non-emergency police van there, and I was like, Woah! So this policeman gets out and is like, "Where are you going?" and I'm all, "To my dad's house," all nonchalant, and he's like, "Where's you dad live?" and I says the name of the town, and he's like, "Hmm, that's quite a long way away," and I'm thinking, You THINK? So in the end I get driven back home I the front of the police car. It was awesome. And it must be awesome too, cos when I tell people about it they think I'm making it up.

February 2009 - I'm not going into all this, let's just say I did something kinda shady and my mum called the cops on me (which is kinda overkill, cos it wasn't THAT shady, and she knew it was me so she could easily have just grounded me instead of wasting police time). It was way uncool.

March 2009 - My brother played truant from school, and the cops came round and had a go at him. He wouldn't talk to them so they threatened to arrest him. I was kinda angry at that, because as much as I dislike my brother, he is an 11-year-old kid, not a hardened criminal. I said to the policeman, "He's just a kid, can't you go easy on him?" in my best I-don't-like-you-you-arrogant-jerk voice. He says, "No!" in his I'm-a-cop-do-as-I-say voice. What an a**hole.

Same month - I ran away just before Mum was going to take me to school. I found an awesome hiding place. In the end I came home cos I was cold, and I had to talk to a policewoman. I wouldn't say where I'd been, I might need to use it again sometime. But I had to go back to school.

The cops have been round our place so much, God knows what they must think of us. But Mum doesn't seem to realise that they probably think she's a terrible mother who calls the cops everytime her kids misbehave.

Here in the US, a prison is a state or federally-owned facility. A jail is county or city-owned.

Prisoners are (usually) processed through a local jail and then depending on their crime and sentence - will do their time in jail (like for DUIs) or be shipped off to a prison or workfarm.

Large city jails are notoriously cesspools - so you don't want to get busted in LA or Atlanta for some bonehead DUI or possession charge and have to spend the night with a bunch of really scary psychos.

Repeat offenders of non-violent crimes, embezzlers, (or in some states - first offenders of really bad drug laws) might do their time at a workfarm. They can earn money, while providing low-cost labor for public works projects and manufacturing and the like, and get counciling and all that good stuff. If they're really good - they may get to take weekends "off" or go to a halfway-house. Electronic monitoring, like ankle bracelets, is making this more possible.

It also depends on the crime, whether they go to a state or federal prison. And - if they are the worst of the worst - they'll go to a Supermax prison - which is basically hell on earth. This is where people go who have no souls - like gang members who have committed multiple murders and have to be completely shut off from the world.

And of course, there are the fabled federal prisons for non-violent offenders - or "white collar crime". The country club prison. I imagine this is where Bernie Madoff will be heading but I haven't looked into it.