Big House population consisted largely of individuals that were, among other characteristics, repeat offenders. The facilities were (some still are) over crowded. Big Houses prisons take on a prison community type of atmosphere where some large groups of people are forced to live or co-habitate with each other. In these type of prisons, working inmates live with idling (non-working) inmates. Both must follow the institutional schedule in which they must shower, eat, and sleep as dictated by that particular schedule. Most Big Houses prisons are classified as maximum security institutions where there are minimal amounts of escapes.
The penal farm systems, on the other hand, usually house first time offenders. Inmates in the penal farm systems are required to work to be in this system. Penal farms are usually classified as minimum security institutions and use the labor aspect as a program type of rehabilitation. .
The most obvious differences between the Big Houses and the penal farms are its physical characteristics. The Big Houses are usually surrounded by concrete walls that contain large cell blocks, and populations as high as 3,000 inmates. The penal farms carry a large plantation type of characteristic where they were usually out in remote areas, unfenced and the inmates lived in a barracks type of environment, which hosted much smaller populations.
In today's era of corrections, some inmates see the Big house as a step in the .
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status ladder on the outside, but inmates in the Big House, for the most part, "do there own time." Some inmates sit and idle until their time is up, while others obtain jobs to make the time go by faster. Some inmates, after scoring minimum custody, request to go to the farms. The convicts (long termers or lifers) accept their confinement as a way of life and usually get a job somewhere in the prison. They go to work, draw a paycheck (actually a statement), and live as normal of a life (sentence) as their institutional life permits.