Internment is the imprisonment or confinement of people, commonly in large groups, without trial. The Oxford English Dictionary (1989) gives the meaning as "The action of ‘interning’; confinement within the limits of a country or place". Most modern usage is about individuals, for example the policy of Internment introduced by the Northern Ireland government in 1971 in an attempt to reduce terrorism (see Operation Demetrius). There is a distinction between internment, which is being confined usually for preventative or political reasons, and imprisonment, which is being closely confined as a punishment for crime. "Internment" also refers to the practice of neutral countries in time of war in detaining belligerent armed forces and equipment in their territories under the Second Hague Convention.
