Jails and Prisons: What’s the Difference?

One of the common facets of the criminal justice system that is often misunderstood is the difference between jails and prisons. Oftentimes, popular culture uses the two interchangeably, which leads to erroneous beliefs that the two are one in the same. In actuality, jails and prisons, while both technically classified as “confinement facilities,” are very different from one another, each with their own specific purposes.

Rawlins, our County Seat, is unique in the fact that it has both a county jail and a state prison (and the author has been lucky enough to have worked in both.) We will start our comparison by first looking at county jails. As the name implies, each county in a state typically has their own county jail. That means that Wyoming has twenty-three county jails, excluding state prisons. A county jail is used to hold detainees (persons arrested or sentenced) in that specific county. For example, if someone is charged with a crime in Green River (Sweetwater County,) they would be detained in the Sweetwater County Jail. If a crime begins in one county (think a high-speed chase) and ends in another, the detainee will typically be detained in the county of origin. For example, last year I was involved in a high-speed pursuit that started in Rawlins, but did not end until we hit the outskirts of Rock Springs. Since the original crime (in this case failure to yield, reckless driving, and driving with no headlights,) began in Rawlins, the suspect was transported all the way back to the Carbon County Jail.

County jails also differ from prisons in the status of the individuals being detained. Where an individual is detained is largely dependent upon the stage of their journey through the criminal justice system. Persons detained in county jails are predominantly “pre-trial detainees,” which means they have been arrested and charged with a violation of the law, but have yet to be convicted and sentenced. Individuals held in county jails may also be serving relatively short sentences for things such as probation revocations or sentences that are under one year. If a detainee is convicted of a crime and is sentenced to a term longer than one year, the individual is then remanded to the custody of the Wyoming Department of Corrections and transported to a state correctional facility, or prison.

Prisons, or state correctional facilities, are a completely different entity than our county jails. Wyoming currently has five state correctional facilities with varying levels of security: Wyoming State Penitentiary (Maximum Security,) Wyoming Medium Correctional Institution (Medium,) Wyoming Honor Farm (Minimum,) Wyoming Honor Conservation Camp (Minimum,) and the Wyoming Women’s Center. If an individual has been convicted of a crime and sentenced to a term longer than one year, they will subsequently be transported from a county jail to one of these state correctional facilities to serve the remainder of their sentence. Several factors may be used to determine which facility an individual will sent to, including the severity of the crime or length of the sentence.

I hope this article helps explain some of the key differences between our county jails and state prisons. As with most things, there are always exceptions and additions. For example, some county jails may contract with other entities (such as the U.S. Marshals,) and some prisons within a state may be Federally or Privately operated (unfortunately there are such things as private prisons.)

As always, thanks for reading! If you have any questions, please reach out as ccsheriff@carbonwy.com or Facebook at Alex Bakken-Carbon County Sheriff.

-Sheriff Alex Bakken