A county jail is United States place of detention for people awaiting trial, or for those who have been convicted of a misdemeanor and are serving a sentence of less than one year. County jails are, in a sense, small prisons run by individual counties. Some have different wings for certain types of offenders, and have work programs for inmates that demonstrate good behavior.

County jails also do not carry out executions, although the Cook County Jail in Chicago did at one time have an electric chair ^*. Unlike most state prisons, a jail has wings to hold both men and women in the same facility. Some jails lease space to house inmates from the federal government, state prisons or from other counties for profit.

In recent years, county jails all over the United States have faced overcrowding crises as the number of low-level offenders ballooned, particularly those accused of drug-and-poverty related crimes. Many jails are full to capacity, and the volume of offenders entering county jails increases every year.

Trivia

• For many years, people imprisoned at the Los Angeles county jail would write home to relatives and loved ones, claiming to be staying at the "Graybar Hotel". This nickname became so popular that eventually, when people wrote to "residents" of the Graybar Hotel, the Post Office would deliver the mail to the Los Angeles County Jail. When the old county jail building was demolished after a new one was built, some media outlets reported that the Graybar Hotel was being torn down.

See also

• Criminal justice
• Prison
• Misdemeanor
• Felony

Imprisonment and detention