Incarceration of Prisoners of War
The Geneva Conventions provides an international protocol defining minimum requirements and safeguards for prisoners of war. In reality, many of these protocols are often ignored, especially more recent ones mandating the payment of a daily wage.
Prisoners are often kept in ad-hoc camps near the battlefield, guarded by MP's (military police) until they can be transferred to more permanent barracks for the duration of the conflict.
Treatment of prisoners-of-war has varied from age to age and nation to nation, the quality of conditions for prisoners often linked with the intensity of the conflict and the resources of the warring parties.
Read more about this topic: Military Prison
Famous quotes containing the words prisoners and/or war:
“We are all conceived in close prison; in our mothers’ wombs, we are close prisoners all; when we are born, we are born but to the liberty of the house; prisoners still, though within larger walls; and then all our life is but a going out to the place of execution, to death.”
—John Donne (c. 1572–1631)
“What war has always been is a puberty ceremony. It’s a very rough one, but you went away a boy and came back a man, maybe with an eye missing or whatever but godammit you were a man and people had to call you a man thereafter.”
—Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. (b. 1922)