Definition
A person deprived of liberty and held in confinement or custody, whether by criminal conviction, pending criminal charge, civil process, or lawful command. The term encompasses anyone whose freedom of movement is restrained against their will by legal authority, regardless of whether physical confinement occurs in a formal prison facility.
Three overlapping usages appear in legal sources:
1. Pre-conviction prisoner: A person accused of a crime who is in custody awaiting trial or disposition. Historically called the "prisoner at the bar" when present before the court during proceedings. Such persons retain a presumption of innocence and, under modern constitutional doctrine, are entitled to conditions of confinement that do not amount to punishment.
2. Post-conviction prisoner: A person serving a sentence of incarceration following criminal conviction. This is the dominant modern usage and the population addressed by the bulk of prisoners' rights law, including Eighth Amendment protections against cruel and unusual punishment.
3. Civil prisoner (largely historical): A person restrained by civil process — for example, held for contempt or, in earlier practice, for failure to satisfy a judgment debt. This category was more practically significant before the abolition of debtors' prisons and the narrowing of civil confinement.
Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): A person incarcerated in a prison while on trial or serving a sentence; more broadly, any person held against their will.
Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): A person under arrest, or in custody, whether in prison or not; a person held in involuntary restraint; a captive.
Editorial note: The ordinary usage of "prisoner" has narrowed over time, now calling to mind primarily a convicted felon serving time in a correctional facility. Legal usage has always been broader — covering pre-trial detainees, civil contemnors, and anyone restrained by lawful authority — while at the same time carrying significant technical consequences depending on which category applies. A researcher who treats "prisoner" as synonymous with "convicted inmate" will misread older sources and miss important distinctions in constitutional doctrine.
Common Confusion
Prisoner vs. detainee: Modern law increasingly uses "detainee" for persons held pre-trial, in immigration custody, or in military/national security contexts. The distinction matters because the constitutional standards governing their treatment differ: convicted prisoners are governed primarily by the Eighth Amendment's prohibition on cruel and unusual punishment, while pre-trial detainees are protected by the Due Process Clause and may not be subjected to punitive conditions. Historical sources use "prisoner" for both categories without distinction.
Prisoner vs. inmate: "Inmate" is an administrative and colloquial term with no independent constitutional significance. "Prisoner" is the legally operative term in constitutional doctrine and statutory frameworks such as the Prison Litigation Reform Act.
Recognized Forms
/SUBTYPES
Prisoner at the bar: The accused person physically present before the court during trial. A term of art in older English and early American practice, used in judicial instructions and courtroom ceremony. Largely displaced by "defendant" in modern usage.
Prisoner on matter of record: Per Rapalje & Lawrence, a person committed to prison by court order while present in court — distinguished from a prisoner on arrest, who is apprehended by a sheriff or other officer outside the court's immediate presence.
Prisoner of war: A combatant captured by an opposing force in armed conflict. Governed by the law of armed conflict and international humanitarian law rather than domestic criminal procedure. Included under the broadest definitions of the term in historical dictionaries but now treated as a distinct legal category.
Why It Matters in Research
The term's meaning has drifted in ways that create real traps. Pre-19th century sources, including Burrill and Bouvier, use "prisoner" expansively — anyone lacking "liberty freely to go at all times, to all places" qualifies, including persons held in their own homes or in open fields. Researchers applying modern assumptions to these passages will underestimate the term's reach. Conversely, modern statutes like the Prison Litigation Reform Act define "prisoner" precisely and narrowly for purposes of exhaustion requirements and fee limitations; a pre-trial detainee may or may not qualify depending on the specific statutory definition and circuit.
The constitutional law dimension bifurcates along pre/post-conviction lines in ways that older dictionaries do not anticipate and that significantly affect research strategy. If you are tracing prisoners' rights doctrine, the Eighth Amendment track (post-conviction) and the Due Process track (pre-trial) require separate corpus searches and draw on different lines of authority.
Bouvier's note that prisoners "accused and not tried" are "considered innocent, and therefore entitled to be treated with as little severity as possible" is an early statement of what modern doctrine formalizes, but the doctrinal vehicle — substantive due process — was not yet developed. Researchers tracing the intellectual lineage of pre-trial detainee rights will find Bouvier useful as a normative antecedent, not as authority.
Historical sources also reflect a world in which civil imprisonment was a live practice. Burrill's broad definition — covering any person without full liberty of movement, whether in gaol or not — reflects a legal landscape in which creditors could imprison debtors and contempt confinement was routine. This context is essential for reading 18th and early 19th century materials accurately.
The Bouvier entry touching on convict-made goods and interstate commerce signals a dimension of prisoner status — the economic and regulatory treatment of prison labor and its products — that is largely absent from the definitional entries but has significant historical and modern policy relevance.
Historical Dictionary Support
The core definition is stable across all sources: a prisoner is someone deprived of liberty and held by lawful authority. Burrill, Black's, and Cowell (cited by both) agree on this foundation.
Where sources diverge is in scope. Burrill's definition, drawn from Termes de la Ley, is the broadest: confinement in one's own house counts; any restraint of free movement qualifies. Rapalje & Lawrence draw the more procedural distinction between commitment by court order and arrest by officer — a distinction that mattered for determining the applicable legal process. Black's (both editions) emphasizes the trial context, foregrounding "the prisoner at the bar" as a practical usage, suggesting a more courtroom-centric frame of reference.
Bouvier stands out for its substantive treatment of how different classes of prisoners ought to be treated — a normative dimension absent from the other dictionaries. The distinction Bouvier draws between accused-but-not-tried prisoners and convicted prisoners anticipates constitutional doctrine by more than a century.
None of the historical sources address the modern constitutional framework governing prisoners' rights, the Prison Litigation Reform Act's definitional constraints, or the civil rights litigation landscape that shapes how "prisoner" now functions as a legal category in federal practice. These are gaps that corpus researchers must fill from post-20th century sources.
Jurisdictional Note
Federal statutory definitions of "prisoner" vary by statute and control interpretation within each statute's scope. The Prison Litigation Reform Act's definition, for instance, has been interpreted differently across circuits with respect to pre-trial detainees and civil committees. State law varies further on civil confinement and the legal incidents of prisoner status, including voting rights, contract capacity, and access to courts.
Encyclopedia Cross-Reference
Eighth Amendment — Conditions of Confinement and Prisoners' Rights (The Law Mind Criminal Law Encyclopedia)
Prisoners' Rights — First, Eighth, and Fourteenth Amendment Protections (The Law Mind Constitutional Law Encyclopedia)