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| former colonies | |
| imprisonment and detention | |
| penal imprisonment | |
| unfree labor | |
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GENERALITIES The prison regime was always harsh, often including severe Physical Punishment , so even if not sentenced for the rest of their natural lives, many died from hunger, disease, medical neglect and excessive efforts, or during an escape attempt. In the Penal Colony system, prisoners were deported far away to prevent escape and to discourage returning after their sentence expired. Penal Colonies were often located in frontier lands, especially the more inhospitable parts, where their unpaid labour could benefit the Metropole s before Immigration labor became available, or even afterwards where they are much cheaper; in fact sometimes people (especially the poor, following a similar social logic as could see them domestically 'employed' in a Poorhouse ) were sentenced for trivial or dubious offenses to generate cheap labor. BRITISH EMPIRE The British used North America as a Penal Colony through the system of Indentured Servant s. Most notably, the Province Of Georgia was originally designed as a penal colony. Convicts would be transported by private sector merchants and auctioned off to plantation owners upon arrival in the colonies. It is estimated that some 50,000 British convicts were banished to colonial America, representing perhaps one-quarter of all British emigrants during the eighteenth century. When that avenue closed in the 1780s after the American Revolution , Britain began using parts of modern day Australia as Penal Colonies. Some of these early colonies were Norfolk Island (which became the flogging hell meant to deter even the most hardened criminals- see Cat O' Nine Tails ), Van Diemen's Land and New South Wales . Advocates of Irish Home Rule or of Trade Union ism (the Tolpuddle Martyrs ) often received Sentence s of Transportation (the harsh regime started during the long shipping) to these Australian colonies. In colonial India, the British had made various penal colonies. Two of the most infamous ones are on the Andaman Islands and at Hijli . ELSEWHERE
FICTION
The concept of remote and inhospitable prison Planet s has been employed by Science Fiction writers. Some famous examples include:
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