Prison or Jail?

Additional clarification: Editors do not need to collect jails (code using the law enforcement icon...for instance, county jails) unless it is a long term holding facility (code as prison). It is not unusual to encounter this situation in Texas.

Any county jails that show up in the editor coded as law enforcement points will be filtered out before any US Topo maps get published since these are not structures we are actively collecting.

Therefore, if you encounter a law enforcement point representing a jail, you can either delete it, or leave it and spend your time editing the structures we are collecting, such as medium/maximum long-term prison facilities. For a holding facility to be considered a "Prison / Correctional Facility," they have to a) serve medium and/or maximum security inmates, AND serve as a medium- or long-term holding facility. Short term is typically up to 1 year, while anything beyond 1 year is generally considered medium or long term.

County Jails don't quite meet this definition. Most county jails hold inmates for a short term (e.g., ~ 1 year) before they are transferred to a facility where they will carry out the entirety of their medium or long term sentences.

Its OK if you edit a jail point, just keep in mind that that data will not be included on any National Map products.

Check out our Structures List: https://navigator.er.usgs.gov/help/WebHelp/structure_def_table.pdf and our Confluence page: https://my.usgs.gov/confluence/display/nationalmapcorps/Structures for more information on prisons and the other types of structures we are actively collecting.