detention center

[ dih-ten-shuhn sen-ter ]

noun

1. a facility maintained by the civil authorities for persons charged with a crime, immigrants awaiting deportation rulings, or sometimes witnesses before a trial.
2. juvenile detention center ( def ).

Word History and Origins

Origin of detention center¹

First recorded in 1945–50

Example Sentences

The guards pulled Kevin and several others out and led them to a row of cells deep inside the detention center.

From Washington Post

Down the hall in the immigration detention center where he was being held, a man whose psychiatric visits had been suspended because of the pandemic was hallucinating and screaming.

From Washington Post

In Michigan, judges have sent children to locked detention centers for refusing to take medication or failing to attend online class.

From ProPublica

They do that by advocating for people to be released so they are not exposed to the novel coronavirus because of the dangerous conditions inside prisons, jails, detention centers, and other locked institutions.

From Vox

By far the most common complaint among the children screened was that it was too cold inside the detention centers, where they are generally given thin Mylar blankets to keep warm.

From Washington Post

Her eldest son, an 18-year-old, is being held separately as an adult in a detention center.

From The Daily Beast

The judges were not given a per capita fee for each child sentenced to the detention center.

From The Daily Beast

In Camp X-Ray, she plays Amy Cole, a newly enlisted guard at Guantanamo Bay detention center.

From The Daily Beast

Couch was not sentenced to an iota of time in a juvenile detention center or prison.

From The Daily Beast

But if Joe knows a corrupt clerk at the Metropolitan Detention Center he can confirm that the associate was actually there.

From The Daily Beast