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.
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 Per the 1929 Geneva Convention on Prisoners of War, later superseded by the Third Geneva Convention, such camps have been required to be open to inspection by representatives of a neutral power, but this hasn't always been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.
