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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](http://english.stackexchange.com/questions/19604/is-there-a-reason-the-british-omit-the-article-when-they-go-to-hospital). – Maulik V Aug 21 '14 at 10:55