Concentration camp

The term concentration camp refers to a camp where individuals are held in extrajudicial detention -- detention not triggered by being charged with a crime, or following a criminal conviction. Historically nations have rounded up groups of individuals who were all of a particular ethnicity, or religion, or held particular political views, who had not committed a crime, but who were believed to, nevertheless, represent a broad threat to the nation. The internet of Japanese-Americans, during World War 2, is an example.

The first camps to be called "concentration camps" were operated in Spanish, Cuba, in the 1890s. The term became better known when the British operated camps to hold Boers, believed to be sympathetic to the resistance fighters, during the Boer War, in South Africa.

Germany's Nazi regime operated death camps, where people were held without trial, which they misleadingly called "concentration camps". The key distinction is that although conditions in concentration camps can be brutal, so brutal captives die, death is not the intent. The Nazi camps goal was genocide -- the wholesale execution of large numbers of people.