1. A person who is serving time in prison.
2. A person who has been apprehended by a law-enforcement officer and is in custody, regardless of whether the person has yet been put in prison. Cf. CAPTIVE(1).
“While breach of prison, or prison breach, means breaking out of or away from prison, it is important to have clearly in mind the meaning of the word ‘prison.’ If an officer arrests an offender and takes him to jail the layman does not think of the offender as being ‘in prison’ until he is safely behind locked doors, but no one hesitates to speak of him as a ‘prisoner’ from the moment of apprehension. He is a prisoner because he is ‘in prison … whether he were actually in the walls of a prison, or only in the stocks, or in the custody of any person who had lawfully arrested him ….’ ” Rollin M. Perkins & Ronald N. Boyce, Criminal Law 566 (3d ed. 1982) (quoting 2 Hawk. P.C. ch. 18, § 1 (6th ed. 1788)).
