I'm an American and I don't differentiate between jail and gaol; I just assumed the latter to just be a funny European spelling of the former.
But yes, we do differentiate between jail and prison - the former usually being for those with short sentences or for those awaiting trial, and the latter being for those with long sentences. Interesting that other countries don't maintain that distinction - but I guess most countries don't have such a sprawling prison-industrial complex to warrant separate short-term v. long-term detention classifications.
Jails do hold long term prisoners, and prisons get pre-trial prisoners too.
There’s literally a market for jail beds. So prisoners are often sent where there’s an open spot, with little distinction between “short term” and “long term”.
A better distinction is that jails are run by a law enforcement agency, while prisons are not.
Your distinction is probably a better one, but the one I've heard is lockups hold temporarily from hours-days, jails hold prisoners for sentences up to a year, prisons for over a year. People might end up in a jail for much longer, but normally they don't.
> A better distinction is that jails are run by a law enforcement agency, while prisons are not.
Depends on whether you count corrections agencies as law enforcement agencies. On the one hand, I'm pretty sure all states have distinct agencies for police v. prisons, but on the other hand, corrections officers are usually sworn peace officers and therefore would count as "law enforcement".
Another distinction, come to think of it, is that prisons are usually under federal or state agencies¹, while jails are usually under county or municipal agencies.
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¹ The only exception I've found is Chester County Prison in Pennsylvania, which is under the Chester County Dept. of Corrections. Wikipedia also has an article on a "Northampton County Prison" (also in PA), but that county's website calls it the "Northampton County Jail"; on a tangential note, if corrections agencies don't count as law enforcement agencies, then the Northampton County Jail would be an exception to the "jails are run by a law enforcement agency" rule.
It's true that prison is an industry in America, but it's also true that only a small minority of prisoners are held in private prisons; about 8% of federal and state prisoners are in private prisons.
The prison industry isn't limited to private prisons; there is substantial private industry financial interest in the operation of the public prisons, as well, whether its providing services to a literally captive market, benefiting from prison labor, etc.
Seeing your comment, and all the comments that follow, is reminding me of the "Misconceptions developers believe about X" posts that circulate on here occasionally.
It seems like there's a lot of beliefs that don't universally apply.
But yes, we do differentiate between jail and prison - the former usually being for those with short sentences or for those awaiting trial, and the latter being for those with long sentences. Interesting that other countries don't maintain that distinction - but I guess most countries don't have such a sprawling prison-industrial complex to warrant separate short-term v. long-term detention classifications.