as in jails
a place of confinement for persons held in lawful custody
the firm conviction that juvenile offenders should never be held in adult lockups
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Recent Examples of lockups
Some private equity or real estate vehicles require multiyear lockups.
—
Gregory Clifford, Forbes.com, 14 Aug. 2025
Gregory Clifford, Forbes.com, 14 Aug. 2025
Recent Examples of Synonyms for lockups
Noun
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Some of those people have been arrested directly by ICE agents while others have been arrested by other law enforcement agencies, placed on immigration holds within county jails and then arrested by ICE while being held.—
Juan Cordoba,
Arkansas Online,
12 Jan. 2026
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Stewart visited three county jails in 2024 and found major lapses in medical and mental health care.—
Jeff McDonald,
San Diego Union-Tribune,
12 Jan. 2026
Noun
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The wave of prison violence is happening despite the deployment of military and police forces in several penitentiaries.—
Michael Rios,
CNN Money,
8 Dec. 2025
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After his conviction, Gray was sent to Angola, one of the most violent penitentiaries in the country at the time.—
Richard A. Webster,
ProPublica,
25 Aug. 2025
Noun
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Foucault did not want simply to write a history of prisons but to produce an account of how power circulates in modern society—not merely through the carceral system but also in universities, medical institutions, the workplace, and the military.—
The New Yorker,
New Yorker,
12 Jan. 2026
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The initiative currently runs three times a year at four California prisons.—
Georgina Jedikovska,
Interesting Engineering,
12 Jan. 2026
Cite this Entry
“Lockups.” Merriam-Webster.com Thesaurus, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/thesaurus/lockups. Accessed 19 Jan. 2026.
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