ABSTRACT
The colonialists built the first jail in 1606 in Jamestown, Virginia. Philadelphia's Walnut Street Jail morphed into the first prison in 1790 with the addition of a new cell house to hold people convicted of crimes for more sustained periods of confinement than those imposed on people held in the jail houses, who were largely detained before their cases were tried. Prisons and jails began to populate the landscape after the Revolutionary War Period. They were constructed in an effort to modernize and reform existing social control mechanisms by eschewing corporeal and capital punishments in favor of more humane options designed to achieve justice and to deter and control lawlessness. The jail population consists of people sentenced to a period of incarceration of up to one year or less for an ordinance violation or misdemeanor conviction. Jail admissions are the number of people who enter the jail in a particular year.
