A jail is generally a short-term forced stay facility of some kind, operated at the local level.

It's a place to keep people locally, and there are security measures and guards and such,

but jails are not often built with long duration inhabitants in mind, and are usually more of a central hub for a collection of

programs like boot camps and work release programs and substance abuse programs, alongside

a relatively small amount of space for holding inmates who are awaiting trial or serving short sentences. A prison, in the U.S.

at least, is usually operated by either a state government or the Federal Bureau of Prisons,

which is a subdivision of the U.S. Department of Justice. The Federal Bureau of Prisons, or BOP,

is responsible for inmates who have violated or who are accused of having violated federal law, which is the level of law that

includes things like interstate commerce, intellectual property, tariffs, foreign relations,

the military, money matters, and increasingly,

from the beginning of the 20th century onward, crimes taking place within the realm of

telecommunications, aviation, and pharmaceuticals. As of 1971, with the implementation of the Controlled Substances Act, which was signed into law by then-president Richard Nixon,

the manufacture, importation, possession, use, and distribution of certain substances has become regulated under federal law.

The U.S. government taking precedent over state governments

when it came to drugs kind of set the tone for a lot of what we're seeing in the U.S. prison

system today, which is something I will get into more later in this episode. There are five

different security levels of prison here in the U.S., starting with federal prison camps, which are minimum security facilities that generally lack perimeter fences and other attributes we might typically associate with prisons.

Federal correctional institutions are the next step up from that, and they have double-fenced perimeters.

Most inmates live in some kind of dormitory building at this level,

so it's still somewhat normalish and even vaguely comfortable for the people kept there.

Then there are medium security correctional facilities and penitentiaries,

which are similar with their double-fenced setup,

...