Other Usages
Protective custody does not necessarily imply a prisoner or a prison setting. In some usages, it might simply involve placing a person in a secure setting, with no implication of imprisonment, such as when a child is placed in temporary foster care. In some cases, non-criminals (or defendants in pending trials) have also been placed in protective custody in a prison setting, for example to protect them from being lynched.
In Nazi Germany, the German equivalent term, 'Schutzhaft', was used as a euphemism for the extra- or para-legal rounding-up of political opponents and especially Jews, sometimes officially defended as being necessary to protect them from the 'righteous' wrath of the German population. Schutzhaft did not provide for a judicial warrant, in fact the detainee would most probably never have seen a judge. The victims were then sent to concentration camps.
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