For context, it's been a little while since we've had a fresh gaolbreak for new Kindles. Last one was LanguageBreak, which came out back in 2023 and required firmware 5.16.2.1.1 or lower.
I first read gaol in a 1960s kids book by Randolph Snow. An Australian as it happens.
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.
In practice, the distinction is overblown.
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.
the word "prison" however (that also exist in French) is a generic term for both.
> 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.
Post conviction, the prisoner will be moved to a state penitentiary to serve out their sentence.
I don't know how these distinctions work at the federal level.
Most of the customers are states that need to put a prisoner somewhere, and most of the sellers are states that have a spare cell somewhere.
It’s mostly government to government sales.
I agree concern over private prisons is overblown. The very idea conjures up Dickensonian workhouses. Not quite the reality.
It seems like there's a lot of beliefs that don't universally apply.
You inhabit a very different reality than everybody else. Americans do not differentiate jail and gaol; Americans don't use the word "gaol" under any circumstances, ever. It is not a part of American English.
These same games will have voice actors pronounce "ye" as it's written, unaware that the y is a typographic substitute for Þ. "ye olde" is pronounced "the old". But likewise, there's some VAs that clearly only ever read a word, like in the newer God of War games where a character mangles "prescient".
Americans never use ‘gaol’. It’s rarely used in Ireland but definitely a term there.
Since that's the topic being discussed, then first portion of your statement wasn't necessary.
Although that distinction is rarely relevant in casual conversation in practice. People say "jail" and mean "prison" all the time.
It can definitely come across as a “Frankenstein’s monster” type of pedantic correction, but they truly do mean two different ideas in the US
British English also differentiates jail and prison, by extension I assume that's universal.
I don't think I've ever once encountered "gaol" before today. Reading the parent comment, I believed it was a non-English language loanword, and probably a recent one at that, until I read the comments.
It's not like I avoid archaic works, either. It's possible I did come across the word at some point, but it was a one-off and without any repetition it faded quickly from my memory.
Am I a one-off?
(Sidenote but I'm still impressed that thing would work without giving my computer half a dozen viruses)
I keep seeing “tyre” on here too. I guess hn is hipster for alternative spellings.
Some of Australia's more popular historical sites are old gaols.
Prisons are where convicts go. Jails are where suspects awaiting trial go. People in prisons have been convicted and sentenced. People in jails might be proven guilty or not.
There are some variations among states, too; e.g., in California, some state felony convicts serve their sentence in county jails rather than state prisons.
I mean when two Australasians speak with each other in a foreign place I definitely hear the accent rise up a bit more outta the both of us but Aussies are something else when it comes to putting on a show, especially when Americans are involved (in my experience).
Never heard of it down here in NSW, and I worked with Police, Justice Department, Juvi, and the rest of police to prison pipeline.
Nobody writes/uses I can concur. The pedantry here, is somewhat apposite surely?
I realize the terms are often used interchangeably but I think the distinction is important especially because of the implications for presumption of innocence from conflating the two.
Pet peeve, but despite being a frequently claimed technical distinction, this is wrong both in terms of the strict definition of the terms and the way they are used as names of real institutions (though it is approximately true in most US state justice systems—but not the federal system—if you consider only felony crimes.)
It's odd that it doesn't mention it as archaic, because it's provably Just Not Used in the real world [0], but it's also an American dictionary, so all bets are off
> https://www.oed.com/search/dictionary/?q=gaol
If you click on the entry your search results give, it takes you to the entry for jail (eg: jail is the canonical noun it's using). Jail and gaol have slightly different routes into English, with gaol being via Northern French. Sez the OED:
> "remains as a written form in the archaic spelling gaol (chiefly due to statutory and official tradition); but this is obsolete in the spoken language, where the surviving word is jail, repr. Old Parisian French and Middle English jaiole, jaile. Hence though both forms gaol, jail, are still written, only the latter is spoken. In U.S. jail is the official spelling."
Finally, though, "jail" as a noun is pretty infrequent compared to "prison", which are the same thing in the UK (unlike the US), but the latter is much more common. The verb form on the other hand is almost always "jail", so when you are "jailed", you're sent to a prison.
0: https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/100681/which-wor...
https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/gaol
Cambridge is British, is it not?
https://www.collinsdictionary.com/dictionary/english/gaol
I believe Collins is the standard dictionary that British people use, much like Merriam-Webster for Americans.
And you would be wrong. They've only been putting out a dictionary since 1979. OED[0] is The Dictionary in the UK, and I've quoted its take on it in an adjacent comment.
I suspect fewer than 1% of British people own any paper English-language dictionary, but the sort of people who need a dictionary beyond what dictionary.com can offer will have online access through their employer, their institution, their local UK public library, or for the princely sum of £8/m for a personal account when paying annually.
Regardless, the authority that the OED holds on British English is best understood through the criticism section of it on Wikipedia, with people decrying its absolutely overwhelming influence:
> criticizing the OED is extremely difficult because "one is dealing not just with a dictionary but with a national institution", one that "has become, like the English monarchy, virtually immune from criticism in principle"
I've routinely referenced it in both the university library and the local town library since 1980.
There's been a digital version of almost all of the second edition kicking about since just prior to the print release of the second edition - I have that on most computer images I own.
The OED offers digital subscription access to the second edition and to the in progress third edition which a good number of people, libraries, companies subscribe to.
It's the dictionary of reference for those serious about the English language.
If people do use a dictionary these days they most likely do use a Collins or Oxford Dictionaries (not the same as the OED). But I imagine that most people would just use a Google search and rely on the top box which itself is using Oxford Dictionaries for its definitions.