In criminal justice, particularly in North America, correction, corrections, and correctional, are umbrella terms describing a variety of functions typically carried out by government agencies, and involving the punishment, treatment, and supervision of persons who have been convicted of crimes. These functions commonly include imprisonment, parole, and probation. A typical correctional institution is a prison. A correctional system, also known as a penal system, thus refers to a network of agencies that administer a jurisdiction's prisons, and community-based programs like parole, and probation boards. This system is part of the larger criminal justice system, which additionally includes police, prosecution and courts. Jurisdictions throughout Canada and the US have ministries or departments, respectively, of corrections, correctional services, or similarly-named agencies.
The Huntsville Unit of the Texas Department of Criminal Justice in Huntsville, Texas, is a prison, a component of a correctional system.
Qur'anic education for offenders at the Central Jail Faisalabad in Faisalabad, Pakistan
Coporal punishment in Afghanistan during the days of the Taliban
US Marshals and prisoners on board a Con Air flight
Punishment, commonly, is the imposition of hated or unpleasant outcome upon a group or individual, meted out by an authority—in contexts ranging from child discipline to criminal law—as a response and deterrent to a particular action or behavior that is deemed undesirable or unacceptable. It is, however, possible to distinguish between various different understandings of what punishment is.
The old village stocks in Chapeltown, Lancashire, England
A modern jail cell
Hester Prynne at the Stocks—an engraved illustration from an 1878 edition of The Scarlet Letter
Punishment of an offender in Hungary, 1793