Is a psychiatric ward worse than jail?

Depends. In jail you serve your time and are released (good behaviour assumed). In a psych ward you have to 'prove' you are well... which is extremely difficult as almost any behaviour can be seen as being evidence of absence or excess of control, disinterest or manipulation and any other spectrum of behaviours you could describe.

There are people in psych wards who are known to have faked mental illness but who cannot obtain release because they are thus seen as sociopathic.

General treatment may be better or worse in either, but your rights are far more fragile in psych, as they can be utterly removed for clinical reasons on almost any grounds with an extremely difficult task to prove that this may be unfounded.

That said, I think that psych wards are overwhelmingly beneficial to the majority of those they care for or treat, but when they fail their patients they do it to extreme levels, even if done with the best intentions.

Psychiatric ward - much safer. People who are violent are quickly gotten rid of - go to the other place, which is for violent people.

The idea that mentally ill people are especially violent is a myth perpetuated by news reports about violence that begin, "A man with a history of mental illness ..."

I've yet to see a news report that goes, "A man with a history of mental illness, George Frederic Handel. wrote the popular holiday oratorio Messiah." Or, "King George III, a man with a history of mental illness, was more reluctant than Parliament in granting independence to the Americans."

actually no it's not and i know as i have been to one of those places

Possibly, due to forced medication.

I lived there for seven months!