A penal colony or exile colony is a settlement used to exile prisoners and separate them from the general population by placing them in a remote location, often an island or distant colonial territory. Although the term can be used to refer to a correctional facility located in a remote location, it is more commonly used to refer to communities of prisoners overseen by wardens or governors having absolute authority.
Inscribed stone honouring an Irish prisoner in the Australian penal colony of Botany Bay
Historically, penal colonies have often been used for penal labour in an economically underdeveloped part of a state's (usually colonial) territories, and on a far larger scale than a prison farm.
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With the passage of the Transportation Act 1717, the British government initiated the penal transportation of indentured servants to Britain's colonies in the Americas, although none of the North American colonies were solely penal colonies. British merchants would be in charge of transporting the convicts across the Atlantic to the colonies where they would be auctioned off to planters. Many of the indentured servants were sentenced to seven year terms, which gave rise to the colloquial term "His Majesty's Seven-Year Passengers".[1][2][3][4] It is estimated that between 1718 and 1776 about 30,000 convicts were transported to at least nine of the continental colonies, whereas between 1700 and 1775 about 250,000 to 300,000 white immigrants came to the mainland of North America as a whole. More than two-thirds of these felons were transported to the Chesapeake to work for Southern landowners; in Maryland, during the thirty years before 1776, convicts composed more than one-quarter of all immigrants.[5] However, it is commonly maintained that the vast majority of felons taken to America were political criminals, not those guilty of social crimes such as theft; for example, it was noted of Virginia that "the crimes of which they were convicted were chiefly political, and the number transported for social crimes was never considerable."[6] The colony of Georgia, by contrast, was planned by James Oglethorpe specifically to take in debtors and other social criminals. Oglethorpe referred to them as "the worthy poor" in a philanthropic effort to create a rehabilitative colony where prisoners could earn a second chance at life, learning trades and working off their debts.[7][8] The success of Oglethorpe's vision is debated.[9]
Advocates of Irish Home Rule or trade unionism (the Tolpuddle Martyrs) sometimes received sentences of deportation to the Australian colonies.[citation needed] Without the allocation of the available convict labour to farmers, to pastoral squatters, and to government projects such as roadbuilding, colonisation of Australia may not have been possible,[citation needed] especially considering the considerable drain on non-convict labor caused by several gold rushes that took place in the second half of the 19th century after the flow of convicts had dwindled and (in 1868) ceased. A proposal to make the Cape Colony a penal colony was deeply unpopular with local residents, sparking the Convict crisis of 1849.
Bermuda, off the North American continent, was also used during the Victorian period. Convicts housed in hulks were used to build the Royal Naval Dockyard there, and during the Second Boer War (1899–1902), Boer prisoners-of-war were sent to the archipelago and imprisoned on one of the smaller islands.[citation needed]
In British India, the colonial government established various penal colonies. Two of the largest ones were on the Andaman Islands and Hijli. In the early days of settlement, Singapore Island was the recipient of Indian convicts, who were tasked with clearing the jungles for settlement and early public works.[citation needed]
Gorgona Island in Colombia housed a state high-security prison from the 1950s. Convicts were dissuaded from escaping by the venomous snakes in the interior of the island and by the sharks patrolling the 30km to the mainland. The penal colony closed in 1984 and the last prisoners were transferred to the mainland. As of 2015[update] most of the former jail buildings are covered by dense vegetation, but some remain visible.
Mexico uses the island of Isla María Madre (in the Marías Islands) as a penal colony. With a small population (fewer than 1,200), the colony is governed by a state official who is both the governor of the islands and chief judge. The military command is independent of the government and is exercised by an officer of the Mexican Navy. The other islands are uninhabited. Mexico announced on 18 February 2019 that it will close the Islas Marías Federal Prison, replacing it with a new cultural center.[16]
Ecuador has used two islands in the Galápagos archipelago as penal colonies: the Island of San Cristóbal (1869–1904) and Isabela Island (1945–1959).
Paraguay's first ruler and supreme dictator José Gaspar Rodríguez de Francia opened the penal colony of Tevego in 1813, where mostly petty criminals were sent. It was abandoned in 1823, but re-established in 1843 as San Salvador. It was evacuated towards the end of the Paraguayan War of 1864–1870; soon afterwards Brazilian troops destroyed it.
Following Alexander the Great's conquest of modern day Afghanistan and Pakistan, the Greco-Bactrian Kingdom was used as a penal colony.[21] Today, 18% of the population of Peshawar has Greek genetic markers.[22]
The Qing Empire of 1636–1912 used general-ruled provinces Jilin (Ningguta) in north-east China and Xinjiang in north-west China as penal colonies.[23]
Imperial Russia used Siberia and Russian Far East for penal colonies (katorga) for criminals and dissidents. Though geographically contiguous with heartland Russia, Siberia provided both remoteness and a harsh climate. In 1857 a penal colony was established on the island of Sakhalin. The Soviet Gulag system and its tsarist predecessor, the katorga system, provided penal labor to develop forestry, logging, and mining industries, construction enterprises, as well as highways and railroads across Siberia and in other areas. In the modern Russian Federation, corrective labor colonies are a common type of prison.
The Kingdom of Hawaii under the rule of King Kamehameha III (reigned 1825–1854) replaced the death penalty with exile, and Kahoolawe became a men's penal colony sometime around 1830, while Kaena Point on Lanai served as the female penal colony. The law making the island a penal colony was repealed in 1853.
Apartheid South Africa used Robben Island as a penal colony for anti-apartheid activists.
The Netherlands had a penal colony from the late 19th century. The Department of Justice took over the town of Veenhuizen (originally set up by a private company to "re-educate" vagrants from the large cities in the west like Amsterdam) to turn it into a collection of prison buildings. The town stands in the least populated province of Drenthe in the north of the country, isolated in the middle of a vast area of peat and marshland.
North Korea operates a penal system including prison labor camps and re-education camps.[25]
Tarrafal operated as a Portuguese penal colony in the Cape Verde Islands, set up in 1936 by the head of the Portuguese government, Salazar, where opponents of this right-wing regime were sent. At least 32 anarchists, communists and other opponents of Salazar's regime died in this camp. The camp closed in 1954 but re-opened in the 1970s to jail African leaders fighting Portuguese colonialism.
Spain maintained a penal colony on Fernando Po in present-day Equatorial Guinea.[26] The tiny island of Cabrera was also a short-lived penal colony in which approximately 7,000 French prisoners of war from the Battle of Bailén (1808) were left on their own for years; less than half of them survived.[27]
Taiwan had a penal colony at Green Island during Chiang Kai-shek's White Terror of 1949–1987. As of 2015[update], the island is a tourist destination.
Butler, James Davie (October 1896), "British Convicts Shipped to American Colonies", American Historical Review 2, Smithsonian Institution, National Museum of Natural History, p.13 "Writing of the early Virginians, he [Bancroft] said: 'Some of them were even convicts; but it must be remembered the crimes of which they were convicted were chiefly political. The number transported to Virginia for social crimes was never considerable.' Most other writers have held that, among transports shipped to America, political offenders formed a large majority."
Guantanamo Could be Terrorist Penal Colony. John Mintz. The Washington Post. Washington, DC. Reprinted by South Florida Sun-Sentinel. Fort Lauderdale, Florida. 13 February 2002. Accessed 11 November 2022. Archived.
"Historia". Museo de Sitio Castillo de Niebla (in Spanish). Servicio Nacional del Patrimonio Cultural. Archived from the original on 4 August 2020. Retrieved 7 April 2020.
For example:
Feig, Konnilyn G. (1981). Hitler's Death Camps: The Sanity of Madness (reissueed.). Holmes & Meier Publishers. p.296. ISBN978-0841906761. Retrieved 29 June 2015. [...] a forced-labor camp [...] named Arbeitslager Treblinka I [...] an order exists, dated 15 November 1941, establishing that penal colony.
Jager, Sheila Miyoshi (2013). Brothers at War: The Unending Conflict in Korea. Profile Books. p.458. ISBN978-1847652027. Retrieved 29 June 2015. Prison labor camps, or kwalliso, were first established in North Korea after liberation from Japan to imprison enemies of the revolution, landowners, collaborators, and religious leaders. After the war, these places housed un-repatriated South Korean prisoners of war. [...] There are six such camps in existence today, according to a May 2011 Amnesty International report, 'huge areas of land and located in vast wilderness sites in South Pyong'an, South Hamyong and North Hamyong Provinces.' ... Perhaps the most notorious penal colony is kwalliso no. 15. or Yodok [...].
Stewart, John (2006). African States and Rulers (3rded.). McFarland & Company. p.96. ISBN978-0786425624. Retrieved 29 June 2015. From 1879 the Spanish basically used Fernando Po as a penal colony for captured Cuban rebels.
Diiulio, John J., Governing Prisons: A Comparative Study of Correctional Management, Simon and Schuster, 1990. ISBN0-02-907883-0.
Dupont, Jerry, "The Common Law Abroad: Constitutional and Legal Legacy of the British Empire", Wm. S. Hein Publishing, 2001. ISBN978-0-8377-3125-4.
Johnsen, Thomas C., "Vita: Howard Belding Gill: Brief Life of a Prison Reformer: 1890–1989", Harvard Magazine, September–October 1999, p.54.
Serrill, M. S., "Norfolk – A Retrospective – New Debate Over a Famous Prison Experiment," Corrections Magazine, Volume 8, Issue 4 (August 1982), pp.25–32.
Mun Cheong Yong, V. V. Bhanoji Rao, "Singapore-India Relations: A Primer", Study Group on Singapore-India Relations, National University of Singapore Centre for Advanced Studies Contributor Mun Cheong Yong, V. V. Bhanoji Rao, Yong Mun Cheong, Published by NUS Press, 1995. ISBN978-9971-69-195-0.