A prison is in place to confine and deprive people from their basic freedoms. A prison is an institution that is part of the criminal justice system that is imposed for the conviction of a crime. A criminal that is charged or going to be charged will be held in a prison if unable to come up with the money for bail. A criminal defendant is also placed in a prison if they are found guilty of a crime (Americanprisonsystem.com, 2009).

The penitentiary was a stepping stone in the evolution of the prison. The penitentiary, however, was the first attempt to use confinement as the punishment itself. In England, one of the first models for the modern prison was intended to provide a place of penance for prostitutes. No matter where most of us live in the world the modern day penitentiary has some philosophy and design history. The penitentiary is a place that posted to be clean and healthy for the inmates. In addition, it a place that ensures the punishment the judge gives to the criminals and other punishment while in the penitentiary (Foster, "Chapter 2/The Penitentiary Ideal," 2006). The criminals are able to think about his or her wrongdoing and try to accomplish a change in life while incarcerated.

The ideal for penitentiary is to keep the criminals off the streets, so that he or she cannot continue to commit crime in the society. Penitentiary ideal purposes were both secular and spiritual (Foster, "Chapter 2/The Penitentiary Ideal," 2006).

A penitentiary had purposes to be both secular and spiritual. Instead of a penitentiary being all about physical punishment, it was supposed to be a place of humane punishment for wrong doers. Instead of prisoners being bunched together, the true penitentiary was meant to have them separated from each other to avoid contamination of the body and spirit. I personally think that a penitentiary should be more like a place