Behind the Prison Bars

• Criminal Justice System: the system of law enforcement that is directly involved in apprehending, prosecuting, defending, sentencing, and punishing those who are suspected or convicted of criminal offenses.

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• Death Sentence: a sentence to be put to death for a capital crime. Methods include lethal injection and electrocution.

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• Ex-Convict: former prisoner​

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• Felony: a crime, typically one involving violence, regarded as more serious than a misdemeanor, and usually punishable by imprisonment for more than one year or by death.

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• Guantanamo Bay: United States military prison located within Guantanamo Bay Naval Base

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• Incarcerated: to imprison, to confine

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• Inmate: a person confined to an institution such as a prison

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• Jail: a place for the confinement of people accused or convicted of a crime.​

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• Life Sentence: any sentence of imprisonment for a crime under which convicted persons are to remain in prison either for the rest of their life or until paroled

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• LWOP: Life sentence without parole, more specifically: no possibility of release from prison except in the rare case of clemency 

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• ​LWP: Life sentence with a possibility of parole, more specifically: the government maintains the right to keep an individual in prison for his/her life, but there is the potential for release after a certain number of years

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• Misdemeanor: a nonindictable offense, regarded in the US (and formerly in the UK) as less serious than a felony.

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• ​Mandatory Minimums: a person convicted of a crime must be imprisoned for a minimum term, as opposed to leaving the length of punishment up to judges.

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• Mass Incarceration: historically extreme rates of imprisonment ​

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• Parole: the release of an incarcerated convict temporarily (for a special purpose) or permanently before the completion of a sentence, on the promise of good behavior.

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• Parole Board: panel of people who decide whether an offender should be released from prison on parole after serving at least a minimum portion of their sentence as prescribed by the sentencing judge.

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• Plea Bargain: an arrangement between a prosecutor and a defendant whereby the defendant pleads guilty to a lesser charge in the expectation of leniency.

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• Prison: a building in which people are legally held as a punishment for a crime they have committed or while awaiting trial.

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• Private Prison: A confinement center that is owned and operated by a third party and is contracted by the local, state, and federal government. The government pays a monthly rate per prisoner housed at the private institution.​

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• ​Probation: the release of an offender, subject to stated conditions and restrictions into the community instead of confining him or her to jail or prison.

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• Public Prison:  Prisons owned and operated by the local, state, and federal government​

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• Restorative Justice Program: bringing together the victim, the offender, and the community; all have equal parts in repairing the relationships destroyed by crime.​

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• Rikers: New York City's main jail complex

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• ​Recidivism: the tendency of a convicted criminal to reoffend

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• Solitary Confinement: the isolation of a prisoner in a separate cell as a punishment

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• School to Prison Pipeline: process through which students are pushed out of schools and intoprisons. In other words, it is a process of criminalizing youth that is carried out by disciplinary policies and practices within schools that put students into contact with law enforcement

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• State Prisons: a prison operated and maintained by a state and used to confine and rehabilitate criminals. In most cases, the state prison is funded by state tax money. The fund is used to provide food and clothes to inmates and to hire employees to keep the prison running

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• "Virtual" or de facto life sentence: a term of imprisonment that is 50 years or more in which the convicted person is not expected to survive 

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• War on Drugs: An American term referring to a movement started by President Nixon in 1971. usually applied to the U.S. federal government's campaign of prohibition of drugs, military aid, and military intervention, with the stated aim being to reduce the illegal drug trade.​

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• Zero Tolerance Rule: policy that imposes strict punishment for infractions of a stated rule, with the intention of eliminating undesirable conduct.

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