Correctional means to do with the punishment and reform of offenders. A correctional facility, correctional officer, the correctional system.
It is chiefly American and it is a euphemism doing real work: correctional facility replaced prison in official language on the argument that the purpose is reform, and whether the institutions serve that purpose is the standing argument about them. Note corrections as a collective noun for the whole system.
1adjectivecorrectionalTo do with the punishment and reform of offenders.
“The correctional officers searched every cell for phones and drugs.”
correctional is a quality of relating to punishment.
Latin
corrēctiō
Old French
correccion
Middle English
correccioun
English
correction
English, today
correctional
From correction + -al. correction comes from Middle English correccioun, correction, from Old French correccion (French correction), from Latin corrēctiō. a doublet of correctio.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA