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Prison(noun)

A building to which people are legally committed as a punishment for a crime or while awaiting trial:

He died in prison.

Both men were sent to prison.

Why not He died in a prison? And is it possible to say He died in the prison if I want to talk abount the prison in which he died?

Are there any other noun with this characteristic?

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Santi Santichaivekin
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    This is the same question: http://english.stackexchange.com/questions/19604/is-there-a-reason-the-british-omit-the-article-when-they-go-to-hospital. Also here http://ell.stackexchange.com/questions/10479/how-do-i-know-when-to-use-the-versus-a-versus-%E2%88%85-as-an-article-on-a-noun (point 8) – fluffy Aug 21 '14 at 01:39
  • In my view, in prison describes a status more than a place. – Anton Sherwood Sep 01 '22 at 00:08

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Swan's PEU (3rd Edition) has an entry for this. It reads...

In some common fixed expressions to do with places, time and movement, normally countable nouns are treated as uncountable, without articles. - Swan's Practical English Usage, Entry 70.

Those common expressions include - to/at/in/from school/university/college; to/in/into/out of bed/prison.; at/from home.

Note: It specifies: in BrE, hospital does not take article. Good discussion about that topic is here, as mentioned by fluffy.

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Maulik V
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    But there are situations where the use of an article is possible, even with those words. There is the school that burned down last year. The governor built a new prison. But even He died in the prison that he built himself! or He died in a prison that had been kept functioning only for his sake . – oerkelens Aug 21 '14 at 08:17
  • Answer updated. However, I'd not prefer using a/the prison in last two examples of yours. – Maulik V Aug 21 '14 at 09:09
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    You may prefer not to, but grammatically, it is needed. He died in prison that he built himself. is not grammatical. – oerkelens Aug 21 '14 at 09:10
  • Trying to understand Swan's approach there. Any clue about the entry 70 then? – Maulik V Aug 21 '14 at 09:12
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    Yups. He died in the prison that he built himself is not a certain fixed expression as meant by Swan. The fixed expression is in prison, not in prison . So he is in prison, but he is in a big prison, in a prison that will be closed soon. – oerkelens Aug 21 '14 at 09:22
  • @oerkelens But that's what both the OP's examples are all about! Fixed expression, aren't they? – Maulik V Aug 21 '14 at 09:46
  • My point was that you only omit the article in those exact expressions. Your answer seemed to indicate you would never use articles with words like "prison" (and you seemed to interpret Swan in that way exactly!). I just intended to note that that simply was not true. – oerkelens Aug 21 '14 at 09:51
  • So normally, it's He died in prison, but with an appropriate context, a and the are also possible or even needed. Right? – Santi Santichaivekin Aug 21 '14 at 10:28
  • @SantiSantichaivekin: Correct :) – oerkelens Aug 21 '14 at 10:29
  • In prison doesn't refer to a single prison, but to the state of being in a prison. If you need to refer to a prison rather than the state, as in oerkelens' example, the version without articles can't be used. In other words, the alternatives are different semantically. –  Aug 21 '14 at 10:40
  • Hmnnnn then, is He died in a prison incorrect? Or it is correct but less used? – Santi Santichaivekin Aug 21 '14 at 10:43
  • He died in prison is correct. To understand snailplane's comment, check answer by caxtontype here. – Maulik V Aug 21 '14 at 10:55