Jail

In Canadian law enforcement terminology, a jail is a detention facility in which a suspected criminal is held while s/he is attempted to be charged with a crime. An individual may be held up to 24 hours, at which point they must either be charged or released according to Canadian law. If a suspect is charged with an offence, they are to appear before a court within 36 hours of their arrest to determine whether the charged suspect can be given a promise to appear (that is, they are released on bail and promise to show up to a court date scheduled within two to three months, or if the charged suspect is considered a flight risk and must then be held in remand (that is, they will be held in a pretrial detention facility resembling a prison more than a jail while awaiting their court date.

Within the county areas of the twelve provinces of Canada, all jails and remand centres are operated, maintained and staffed by the respective county's Department of Corrections; it is common for a county constabulary as well as other departments to have jails attached to their station, usually in the basement area, but these jails are not actually run by the respective police but instead the county's Department of Corrections. Once a charged suspect is sentenced to incarceration, those with sentences up to two years serve the time in provincial prisons, which are run by the province's respective corrections department, and as such there are no post-trial prisons operated by counties or other lower levels of government than the province. While the Criminal Code of Canada is uniform across all provinces and territories, the provinces and territories handle the vast majority of actual jurisprudence, with the Canada Court of Appeals and Supreme Court handling only the most important cases which affect the country as a whole. Nevertheless, all persons sentenced to a term of over two years serve this time in a federal prison, which is operated by Corrections Canada.