Jail vs. prison

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With all of my posts lately, I feel like I need to clarify something. I see so many people (not on here but in general) use the term jail and prison interchangeably and there is a difference. Prison is worse than jail. Jail is usually where they throw you while you're waiting for trial or to be sentenced or where they put you for a misdemeanor (something more minor). Usually, the most time anyone stays in jail is a year unless they're being held before going to prison for some reason in which they take that time off the time they're supposed to serve in prison. Jail does seem to have more restrictions than prison but prison is typically more of a violent atmosphere. Prison is where people go for felonies which are usually more serious not always murder or anything and sometimes I find the reasoning for some felonies stupid. For instance when my husband was out of work because we were coming out of a recession and he was having a hard time finding a job they threw him in jail for a while for not paying child support and told him if he went back to jail for not paying child support it'd be prison next time. I could maybe see if someone was actually trying to hide and get out of paying it but my husband wasn't. He actually caught up on all of his child support and works super hard now. They took over half of his checks when he first started working and he could barely afford to support himself. Anyway, that's one reason for it another is the three strike rule which is when you get three misdemeanors for minor crimes you get thrown into prison. Our state doesn't have that but a lot of other states do. The state my brother was in actually had that law but somehow my brother somehow got out of it. Prison also has different levels of security: Minimum for less severe crimes, medium which I guess is where most prisoners are, and high security for the worst prisoners. There's state and federal prison and I guess state prison is often more dangerous than federal. It's interesting how prisons vary from one another. Some are tougher than others. I have never really known anyone directly in prison I did have a friend whose son got sent there. The son is now out and seems to have turned his life around. In the US prison shows are pretty popular and I've watched enough of them to know it's not a place you want to be. Jail isn't fun either but nowhere near as scary from my understanding not that I have personal experience. I've always been a by the book type of person. Just thought I'd explain a little bit. US prisons are different from a lot of the more lenient European prisons where they're more about rehabilitation than punishment.