Jail is usually the first place a person is taken after being arrested by police officers. The authority of states to build, operate, and fill jails can be found in the Tenth Amendment, which has been construed to grant to states the power to pass their own laws to preserve the safety, health, and welfare of their communities. Jail is to protect the public and citizens of county by providing a wide range of constructive, professional correctional services for pre-trial and convicted detainees. Jail is also ensure the safety and welfare of staff, visitors, and offenders by operating facilities and programs in a secure, humane environment which meets professional and standards and constitutional requirements. It reduces the rate to reincarceration by providing offenders with the opportunity for self improvement and the inner resources necessary to make a successful adjustment within the community.
An act of 1790 brought about sweeping reforms in the prison and authorized a penitentiary house with 16 cells to be built in the yard of the jail to carry out solitary confinement with labor for "hardened atrocious offenders." Jails are run by the county of a state and serve as locally-operated holding places, usually for brief periods of incarceration or as a detention place before and during trial and other legal matters. For example, someone convicted of a misdemeanor crime would be jail. In addition, the sentence must be less than a year. Jails are especially for someone being held in custody for trail, or they couldn’t afford bail, or they were just arrested will be held in the county jail, not prison. As such, jails are impermanent county residences, and lack many of the amenities and programs that the large prisons have. Jails are usually run by the sheriff or the local government. According to the Department of Justice, there are approximately 3,600 jails in the United States. On the hand, prisons are federal or state-run.
Cited: http://www.prisonsociety.org/about/history.shtml http://voices.yahoo.com/federal-state-prison-systems-5523617.html?cat=37 http://www.jailguide.com/security_level.php http://www.211ct.org/InformationLibrary/Documents/State%20Prison%20fj.asp http://www.federalcriminallawyer.us/2010/11/18/prisoners-custody-level-while-in-federal-prison/ http://www.bop.gov/locations/institutions/index.jsp https://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&q=cache:owlHHe96aDIJ:www.doc.state.ia.us/Documents/BOCPopulationGrowthReport.pdf+state+prisons+factor+influencing+growth&hl=en&gl=us&pid=bl&srcid=ADGEESgCwigrTGYE9CDKEnoTeCjQ62u6jvl8AYXqp_IuBD4WfPZEwWwN1npL3MCb1z7Zr8KO_mHExYoyxw4ulH_SMVcP5dUMS4CQMN2vjnECLzDKrwo-q8YU4LFXBhOKTWhnv3xKWAvX&sig=AHIEtbR5B9z4ivz6YlkKgO1KQnXnlb-c2A