incarceration

UK/ɪŋˌkɑː(ɹ)səˈɹeɪʃən/US/ɪŋˌkɑː(ɹ)səˈɹeɪʃən/

nounC1Occasional — familiar, but not everyday · #9,166 of 15,258leans written

Other forms: incarcerations

Incarceration is being kept locked up. Years of incarceration.

It is the formal word and belongs to law and to writing about prisons. Rates of incarceration differ enormously between countries with similar crime rates, which is a political fact rather than a criminal one.

Definitions of incarceration

1nounincarcerationBeing kept locked up.C1
“Eleven years of incarceration ended with the conviction overturned.”

incarceration is a state.

Where it comes from

Medieval Latin incarceratio comes from carcer, a prison.

Medieval Latin
incarcerātiō
English, today
incarceration

Borrowed from Medieval Latin incarcerātiō. Medieval Latin incarcerātiō, equivalent to incarcerate + -ion.

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA

Practise this word

incarceration in the wild

Hospitals in the camps recorded 5,981 births and 1,862 deaths during incarceration.
Internment of Japanese Americans
Drug offenses account for the incarceration of about 1 in 5 people in U.S. prisons.
Incarceration in the United States
Property offenses account for the incarceration of about 1 in 7 people in state prisons.
Incarceration in the United States
According to the World Prison Brief (WPB) the United States had the world's highest incarceration rate from 2001 (when the US overtook Russia) through October 4, 2022.
United States incarceration rate
State and federal prison, and local jail, incarcerations dropped from 2.1 million in 2019 to 1.7 million in 2020.
United States incarceration rate

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From Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. These sentences were written by other people about their own subjects; they are here to show the word at work, not as anybody’s opinion.

Related words

incarcerate

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