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Prisoner-of-war camp

A prisoner-of-war camp (often abbreviated as POW camp) is a site for the containment of enemy fighters captured as prisoners of war by a belligerent power in time of war.

Not to be confused with internment camp or military prison.

There are significant differences among POW camps, internment camps, and military prisons. Purpose-built prisoner-of-war camps appeared at Norman Cross in England in 1797 during the French Revolutionary Wars and HM Prison Dartmoor, constructed during the Napoleonic Wars, and they have been in use in all the main conflicts of the last 200 years. The main camps are used for marines, sailors, soldiers, and more recently, airmen of an enemy power who have been captured by a belligerent power during or immediately after an armed conflict. Civilians, such as merchant mariners and war correspondents, have also been imprisoned in some conflicts. Per the 1929 Geneva Convention on Prisoners of War, later superseded by the Third Geneva Convention, such camps have been required to be open to inspection by representatives of a neutral power, but this hasn't always been consistently applied.

Detention of prisoners of war before the development of camps[edit]

Before the Peace of Westphalia, enemy fighters captured by belligerent forces were usually executed, enslaved, or held for ransom.[1] This, coupled with the relatively small size of armies, meant there was little need for any form of camp to hold prisoners of war. The Peace of Westphalia, a series of treaties signed between May and October 1648 that ended the Thirty Years' War and the Eighty Years' War, contained a provision that all prisoners should be released without ransom. This is generally considered to mark the point where captured enemy fighters would be reasonably treated before being released at the end of the conflict or under a parole not to take up arms. The practice of paroling enemy fighters had begun thousands of years earlier, at least as early as the time of Carthage[2] but became normal practice in Europe from 1648 onwards. The consequent increase in the number of prisoners was to lead eventually to the development of the prisoner of war camps.

Article 10 required that POWs should be lodged in adequately heated and lighted buildings where conditions were the same as their own troops.

Articles 27–32 detailed the conditions of labour. were required to perform whatever labour they were asked and able to do, so long as it was not dangerous and did not support the captor's war effort. Senior Non-commissioned officers (sergeants and above) were required to work only in a supervisory role. Commissioned officers were not required to work, although they could volunteer. The work performed was largely agricultural or industrial, ranging from coal or potash mining, stone quarrying, or work in saw mills, breweries, factories, railway yards, and forests. POWs hired out to military and civilian contractors and were paid $.80 per day in scrip in U.S. camps. The workers were also supposed to get at least one day per week of rest.

Enlisted ranks

Article 76 ensured that POWs who died in captivity were honourably buried in marked graves.

Korean War[edit]

U.N. camps[edit]

The International Red Cross visited United Nations-run POW camps, often unannounced, noting prisoner hygiene, quality of medical care, variety of diet, and weight gain. They talked to the prisoners and asked for their comments on conditions, as well as providing them with copies of the Geneva Convention. The IRC delegates dispersed boots, soap, and other requested goods.


A prison camp was established on the island of Koje-do, where over 170,000 communist and non-communist prisoners were held from December 1950 until June 1952. Throughout 1951 and early 1952, upper-level communist agents infiltrated and conquered much of Koje section-by-section by uniting fellow communists; bending dissenters to their will through staged trials and public executions; and exporting allegations of abuse to the international community to benefit the communist negotiation team. In May 1952, Chinese and North Korean prisoners rioted and took Brigadier General Francis T. Dodd captive.[38]


In 1952 the camp's administration was afraid that the prisoners would riot and demonstrate on May Day (a day honoring Communism) and so United States Navy ships (such as the USS Gunston Hall) removed 15,000 North Korean and Chinese prisoners from the island and moved them to prison facilities at Ulsan and Cheju-do. These ships also participated in Operation Big Switch in September 1953 when prisoners were exchanged at the end of the war.

Communist camps[edit]

The Chinese operated three types of POW camps during the Korean war. Peace camps housed POWs who were sympathetic to communism, reform camps were intended for skilled POWs who were to be indoctrinated in communist ideologies and the third type was the normal POW camps. Chinese policy did not allow for the exchange of prisoners in the first two camp types.[39]


While these POW Camps were designated numerically by the communists, the POWs often gave the camps a name.

Vietnam War[edit]

South Vietnamese Army camps in South Vietnam[edit]

By the end of 1965, Viet Cong suspects, prisoners of war, and even juvenile delinquents were mixed together in South Vietnamese jails and prisons. After June 1965, the prison population steadily rose, and by early 1966, there was no space to accommodate additional prisoners in the existing jails and prisons. In 1965, plans were made to construct five POW camps, each with an initial capacity of 1,000 prisoners and to be staffed by the South Vietnamese military police, with U.S. military policemen as a prisoner of war advisers assigned to each stockade.

Banja Luka, Republika Srpska

Manjača camp

Sremska Mitrovica, Vojvodina

Sremska Mitrovica camp

Stajićevo, Vojvodina

Stajićevo camp

– 32 km west of Baghdad, Iraq

Abu Ghraib prison

– near Charikar in Parvan, Afghanistan

Bagram Air Base

– near Umm Qasr, Iraq

Camp Bucca

Guantanamo Bay, Cuba

Camp Delta

The United States of America refused to grant prisoner-of-war status to many prisoners captured during its War in Afghanistan (2001–2021) and 2003 invasion of Iraq. This was mainly because it classed them as insurgents or terrorists, which did not meet the requirements laid down by the Third Geneva Convention of 1949 such as being part of a chain of command, wearing a "fixed distinctive marking, visible from a distance", bearing arms openly, and conducting military operations in accordance with the laws and customs of war.[40]


The legality of this refusal has been questioned and cases are pending in the U.S. courts. In the Hamdan v. Rumsfeld court case, on June 29, 2006, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the captives at Guantanamo Bay detention camp were entitled to the minimal protections listed under Common Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions. This is under dispute. Other captives, including Saddam Hussein, have been accorded POW status. The International Red Cross has been permitted to visit at least some sites. Many prisoners were held in secret locations (black sites) around the world. The identified sites are listed below:

List of World War II prisoner-of-war camps in the United States

American Civil War prison camps

Finnish Civil War prison camps

Internment camp

List of prisoner-of-war escapes

List of World War II POW camps

Military prison

Eden Camp Museum

Burnham, Philip. So Far from Dixie: Confederates in Yankee Prisons (2003)

Byrne, Frank L., "Libby Prison: A Study in Emotions," Journal of Southern History 1958 24(4): 430–444.

in JSTOR

Cloyd, Benjamin G. Haunted by Atrocity: Civil War Prisons in American Memory (Louisiana State University Press; 2010) 272 pages.traces shifts in Americans' views of the brutal treatment of soldiers in both Confederate and Union prisons, from raw memories in the decades after the war to a position that deflected responsibility.

Horigan, Michael. Elmira: Death Camp of the North (2002)