The difference between state/federal prison, parole/probation and jail/prison.

For those of you that do not know, I was actually on the front page of popular news aggregation website Reddit. My post was in the format of something called an "IAmA", which invited the users at large to ask me various questions about my recent trip to the federal prison system that lasted several years too long for my liking. If you'd like to view the original post, here is the link Jack on Reddit IAmA.

At the time of this writing, the post as over 12,500 votes, over 9,000 of which were positive. There are also over 3,000 comments, many of which I responded to (as that is the purpose of doing an IAmA).  To my surprise, most of the comments/questions involved what the federal prison system was actually like on the inside and how a person might fare in there. I was actually expecting more dialogue concerning what actually got me indicted in the first place - importing chemicals from China to the United States.

Several readers suggested I write a book about my ordeal. One of the main purposes of this Blog is for me to be able to collect and maintain some writing specific to my experience(s) in Federal prison which could one day serve as chapters or a template for such a book.

My experience on Reddit makes me aware that what most people are interested in is how the actual process works and what day-to-day life is like behind the walls and bars. While in prison, I thought it would be a great idea to write an epic story about how I ended up in prison, my forays into the underground Research Chemical market and all of my various escapades as a drug dealer and criminal in general.

I should have known! Prison culture is popular in the United States. Your chances of going to prison, this day and age, are much greater than they were at any time prior. Almost everybody knows somebody who knows somebody who is either in prison or has been to prison. Shows like "Orange is the New Black" highlight how successful even fictional accounts of prison life may be. I've actually never seen that show, but have heard that it is much closer to real life than many other depictions of the prison system, especially the federal prison system.

One of the big misconceptions that people have is that they think that all prisons are just "prison", or worse yet, "jail". There are many nuances to the actual structure of the system. Did you know there is a difference between "probation" and "parole"? As someone who must spend the next 3 years or so on federal probation, it is very frustrating to hear people constantly refer to it as "parole". What are the differences?

Let's start with the difference between STATE and FEDERAL prison. When you go to state prison, it is because you were prosecuted under the jurisdiction of a particular state. This is the most common scenario, as the majority of criminal cases fall within the jurisdiction of a particular county. As counties are part of the state in which they reside, the judges which handle state cases end up sending those defendants to state prison systems (when and if they are found guilty during criminal proceedings). States typically process the more mundane and common criminal cases.

Federal prison is where a defendant goes when they are indicted by a grand jury and prosecuted by the actual United States government. Rather than seeing "The State of Florida Versus (Defendant)", they will get nice pieces of paper with "The United States of America Versus (Defendant)" typed in usually all capital letters across the to of the page. Federal prosecutors handle any type of case which has international components, for a start, but federal judges have jurisdiction over a wide variety of crimes, some of which would make more sense for a state to prosecute.

You know those alphabet agencies, like the FBI, DEA and ATF? Those are federal agencies. When they get involved, the likelihood of the case making it to federal court increases substantially. This means that rather large cases involving numerous defendants or a high volume of drugs/money/victims will end up going before a grand jury and indicted on a federal, rather than state, level.

While a defendant is awaiting trial, they are held in facilities that are called jails. The difference between a jail and a prison is that jails do not typically house sentenced inmates. Some jails will hold inmates that have been found guilty on a state level, but only when their sentence is very short. In Florida, for instance, getting a sentence of over one year is what determines if an inmate will spend their time inside of a jail rather than a prison.

Once actually accepted into the prison system, there are numerous transfer and sorting facilities that process inmates on their way to their final destination. These add further confusion to outsiders who are unfamiliar with the mechanics, as these housing systems are harder to classify and come in various shapes and sizes.

A lot of state courts and all federal courts have removed parole as an option for inmates. What is parole? Parole is what happens to an inmate when they serve part of their sentence inside of prison and then serve the remaining sentence outside of prison for whatever reason. A prisoner who violated parole would be sent back to prison to finish the original duration of their sentence. Probation is different because it can occur as an alternative to a prison sentence, or as conditions for release after a prison sentence has been fully served, which is the case with federal prisoners. The minimum amount of time a federal prisoner will spend on probation is typically 3 years. Some federal inmates actually face lifelong probation after their incarceration ends.

You should now be much more informed than the average citizen about what the differences are between these various components. Besides lawyers, judges, prosecutors and the other people who are employed by the legal system, inmates are usualy the only people aware of these differences.