A compter, sometimes referred to as a counter, was a type of small English prison controlled by a sheriff.^[1] The inmates were usually civil prisoners, for example dissenters and debtors. Examples of compters include London's Wood Street Compter, Poultry Compter, Giltspur Street Compter and Borough Compter and the lock-up over the Abbey Gateway, next to St Laurence's church, in Reading, Berkshire (this was the Compter Gate and the lock-up was known as the Compter).

The Compter's Commonwealth (1617), by William Fennor, was a work written from the author's experience of imprisonment at London's Wood Street Compter,^[2] and is regarded by many historians as one of the principal primary sources for assessment of English 16th-century prison conditions.^{[citation needed]}