Prison

"''"When you're in prison, don't turn the other way ''Keep your back against the wall ''When you're in prison, don't turn the other way Do not bend at all...""

- The Offspring, "When You're in Prison"

Jail, the Big House, the Slammer.

If a show is set in Prison, the wardens and/or guards usually contain at least one Drill Sergeant Nasty, and there is a prevalence of gang violence, drug abuse, and Prison Rape. Due to the need to present the setting as extremely violent, dangerous and chaotic, shows set primarily in prison, such as Oz, will frequently use Red Shirt characters.

Subtropes:


 * The Alcatraz
 * Cardboard Prison
 * Epiphanic Prison
 * Gilded Cage
 * Hellhole Prison
 * Luxury Prison Suite
 * Penal Colony
 * POW Camp
 * And its two bastard children, the internment camp and the concentration camp.
 * Prison Episode
 * Tailor-Made Prison

See Prison Tropes and Crime and Punishment Tropes for tropes that frequently come into play in stories featuring prisons.

For Real Life background information:
 * Useful Notes: American Prisons

Film
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 * Fortress
 * Prison

Literature

 * Time Spike by Eric Flint and Marilyn Kosmatka, which is loosely connected with his Ring of Fire series. A modern American maximum-security prison, as well as several other groups, are moved back in time to the Cretaceous.

Live-Action TV

 * Oz
 * Prison Break
 * Porridge which ran considerably against type, being a sitcom with relatively little violence. Episodes focusing instead on surviving institutional life, characters and friendship.
 * Bad Girls
 * Prisoner: Cell Block H
 * Hogan's Heroes
 * Colditz

Video Games

 * Chronicles of Riddick: Escape from Butcher Bay: A game based entirely on escaping from prison that was actually pretty fun.
 * Sanitarium: A great game based on escaping from a loony bin.
 * The Suffering is a third-person shooter that takes place on a prison... that gets attacked by monsters.
 * Half Life 2 had you breaking into a high security prison, Nova Prospekt. To do this you had to storm a fortified beachfront, run past several machine gunners, scale a steep cliff face and shoot down a pair of gunships just to make it inside. According to another character, this was easier than breaking out. Once inside, the largely empty Nova Prospekt turned out to be pretty eerie.
 * The Riot Act mod is about breaking out of Combine-operated prison.
 * Batman: Arkham Asylum: The entire game is set in the titular insane asylum/prison. Fortunately, it's varied enough to be entertaining the whole way through.

Web Comics

 * The Lydian Option is a sci-fi comic set on an asteroid prison run by a species that incarcerates criminals for every offense, no matter how minor.

Web Original

 * Survival of the Fittest version three has a jailhouse/prison/military stockade as one of the locations, frequently used as shelter by the students. So far it's one of the least bloody locations on the island, with only one person having died there. V3 characters Brad Kavanagh and Eduardo Trinidad-Villa are also mentioned as having spent time in juvenile hall, Brad on (false) murder charges, and Eduardo on assault charges. Brad was released when the real killer came forward and his case was overturned, but Eduardo served his entire sentence.

Western Animation

 * Superjail

Anime and Manga

 * One Piece (Impel Down arc.)

Comic Books

 * In All Fall Down, end up here at the finish.

Literature

 * Multiple books by Jodi Picoult, including The Pact, Vanishing Acts, and Change of Heart.

Live-Action TV

 * Arrested Development
 * Law and Order and the derivatives
 * My Name Is Earl (season three)
 * Red Dwarf (series eight)
 * The Shield (season four)
 * The Wire (season two, more briefly in season three and still more briefly in season 4)

Webcomics

 * Sodality frequently has episodes where Candi and Dolly get sent to one. (They are usually able to clear their names and get out.)  In season five, nearly the whole team is incarcerated.  (Though it's more a Kind Restraints version of witness protection due to the Super Registration Act, and the girls get not-quite Luxury Prison Suites so they can still run comms both for their SCALLOP captors and their friends who have not yet been charged/captured.)