What is the role of prisons in criminal justice administration?

Answer 1

Technically, the role of a prison is to hold people convicted of crimes, whose sentence has stipulated that they must be incarcerated.

In the big picture, prisons serve several purposes:

1. Pre-trial detention - a place to hold persons formally indicted of a crime who is awaiting trial, and who either cannot pay bail, or is deemed to potentially dangerous to be granted bail prior to trial.
2. Post-Conviction Detention - a place where a criminal is to remain in restricted care, under the assumption that such detention is needed to prevent the criminal from harming society more, which they would do if free.
3. Post-Conviction Punishment - holding a criminal in restricted care is a way to punish the criminal for their crime, under the theory that the prison is an undesirable place to be, and that being put there is a consequence of their criminal action.
4. Post-Conviction Reform - a place where a criminal can be rehabilitated, and give up their criminal ways. This can include counseling, teaching of new skills to replace those used to commit crimes, therapy for mental disorders or the like (e.g. anger management, psychotherapy), etc.
5. Post-Conviction Restitution - a place where a criminal can work to repay society or victims harm their crimes caused. This repayment can take a variety of forms, and doesn't necessarily mean cash payments.
6. Post-Conviction Execution - while technically part of punishment, prisons are now the place that most executions happen.

Obviously, not all prison serve the same purpose, and the amount of each that goes on in a specific prison varies widely.

Note, that in the US, a "prison" is different than a "jail". Prisons are generally run by the State or Federal authorities, and function for the purposes above. Jails are almost exclusively run by local authorities (city, town, or county), and serve as short-term detention: places where people who are arrested are held prior to a formal hearing where charges are levied. Jails generally don't hold people for more than a couple of days at most; those needing to be held longer are transferred to an appropriate prison. Another noted difference is that jails are almost always immediately adjacent to the relevant courthouse, while prisons tend to be in isolated places.

Answer 2

Prisons have several roles such as locking up people that have committed a crime, so as to protect the community from further crimes that a person might commit. Another function is to "rehabilitate" offenders so as to prevent a person committing similar crimes in the future. About 75% of prisoners have drug addiction as a comorbid condition to heir offences. Most drug addicts return to prison after release, because drug addiction is very difficult to treat. Recidivism (repeat offences) is rife, because people do not seem to understand that for instance drug addiction is a disease, not a "psychological" problem although the illness have "psychological" symptoms.

See:

Answer 3

to hold convicted felons serving a sentence