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114-586: Each cell contains a bed, toilet, shower, desk and a shelf. Bedding and toiletries are supplied. Each child is given breakfast, morning tea, lunch, afternoon tea and dinner. Phone calls of up to 10 minutes at a time totaling 120 minutes of call time each week are permitted. Detainees are allocated chores like cleaning but there is no hard labour . Children are assigned a caseworker . Youth detention centres in Queensland have an education and training centre, which detainees are required to participate in five days

228-463: A crank by hand which in turn forced four large cups or ladles through sand inside a drum, doing nothing useful. Male prisoners had to turn the handle 6,000–14,400 times over the period of six hours a day (1.5–3.6 seconds per turn), as registered on a dial. The warder could make the task harder by tightening an adjusting screw. The British penal colonies in Australia between 1788 and 1868 provide

342-512: A bill was proposed to the House of Commons to allow the transporting of felons, and was followed by another bill presented to the Lords to allow the transportation of criminals convicted of felony within clergy or petty larceny. These bills failed, but it was clear that change was needed. Transportation was not a sentence in itself, but could be arranged by indirect means. The reading test, crucial for

456-565: A building or structure in Queensland is a stub . You can help Misplaced Pages by expanding it . Hard labour Penal labour is a term for various kinds of forced labour that prisoners are required to perform, typically manual labour . The work may be light or hard, depending on the context. Forms of sentence involving penal labour have included involuntary servitude , penal servitude , and imprisonment with hard labour . The term may refer to several related scenarios: labour as

570-465: A business: merchants chose from among the prisoners on the basis of the demand for labour and their likely profits. They obtained a contract from the sheriffs, and after the voyage to the colonies they sold the convicts as indentured servants . The payment they received also covered the jail fees, the fees for granting the pardon, the clerk's fees, and everything necessary to authorise the transportation. These arrangements for transportation continued until

684-491: A distant British colony, except in cases where a person could be sentenced to transportation for life or for a term not less than fourteen years. Section 2 of the Penal Servitude Act 1857 (20 & 21 Vict. c. 3) abolished the sentence of transportation in all cases and provided that in all cases a person who would otherwise have been liable to transportation would be liable to penal servitude instead. Section 1 of

798-532: A distant place, often a colony , for a specified term; later, specifically established penal colonies became their destination. While the prisoners may have been released once the sentences were served, they generally did not have the resources to return home. Banishment or forced exile from a polity or society has been used as a punishment since at least the 5th century BCE in Ancient Greece . The practice of penal transportation reached its height in

912-522: A form of punishment, the prison system used as a means to secure labour, and labour as providing occupation for convicts. These scenarios can be applied to those imprisoned for political, religious, war, or other reasons as well as to criminal convicts. Large-scale implementations of penal labour include labour camps , prison farms , penal colonies , penal military units , penal transportation , or aboard prison ships . Punitive labour , also known as convict labour, prison labour, or hard labour ,

1026-724: A free settlement was established and this settlement later accepted some convict transportation. Until the massive influx of immigrants during the Australian gold rushes of the 1850s, free settlers had been outnumbered by penal convicts and their descendants. However, compared to the British American colonies , Australia received a larger number of convicts. Convicts were generally treated harshly, forced to work against their will, often doing hard physical labour and dangerous jobs. In some cases they were cuffed and chained in work gangs. The majority of convicts were men, although

1140-479: A group of convict ships departed from England to establish the first colonial settlement in Australia, as a penal colony . The First Fleet included boats containing food and animals from London. The ships and boats of the fleet would explore the coast of Australia by sailing all around it looking for suitable farming land and resources. The fleet arrived at Botany Bay , Sydney on 18 January 1788, then moved to Sydney Cove (modern-day Circular Quay ) and established

1254-627: A major historical example of convict labour, as described above: during that period, Australia received thousands of transported convict labourers, many of whom had received harsh sentences for minor misdemeanours in Britain or Ireland . As late as 1885, 75% of all prison inmates were involved in some sort of productive endeavour, mostly in private contract and leasing systems. By 1935, the portion of prisoners working had fallen to 44%, and almost 90% of those worked in state-run programmes rather than for private contractors. According to section 45(1) of

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1368-573: A mix of extreme production quotas , brutality , hunger and the harsh elements. In all, more than 18 million people passed through the Gulag , with further millions being deported and exiled to remote areas of the Soviet Union. The fatality rate was as high as 80% during the first months in many camps. Immediately after the start of the German invasion of the Soviet Union during World War II ,

1482-573: A number of years. The American Revolution brought transportation to the North American mainland to an end. The remaining British colonies (in what is now Canada) were regarded as unsuitable for various reasons, including the possibility that transportation might increase dissatisfaction with British rule among settlers and/or the possibility of annexation by the United States – as well as the ease with which prisoners could escape across

1596-425: A prison workshop. In such cases, the pursuit of income from their productive labour may even overtake the preoccupation with punishment or reeducation as such of the prisoners, who are then at risk of being exploited as slave-like cheap labour (profit may be minor after expenses, e.g. on security). This is sometimes not the case, and the income goes to defray the costs of the prison. Victorian inmates commonly worked

1710-547: A private company, in the framework of a prison/company agreement for leasing inmate labour. Work ceased being compulsory for sentenced inmates in France in 1987. From the French Revolution of 1789 , the prison system has been governed by a new penal code. Some prisons became quasi-factories, in the nineteenth century, many discussions focused on the issue of competition between free labour and prison labour. Prison work

1824-661: A proposal to release women who could not be transported, but this solution was considered absurd: this caused the Lords Justices to order that no distinction be made between men and women. Women were sent to the Leeward Islands , the only colony that accepted them, and the government had to pay to send them overseas. In 1696 Jamaica refused to welcome a group of prisoners because most of them were women; Barbados similarly accepted convicts but not "women, children nor other infirm persons". Thanks to transportation,

1938-634: A punishment for a crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction". Unconvicted detainees awaiting trial cannot be forced to participate in forced rehabilitative labour programs in prison as it violates the Thirteenth Amendment. The " convict lease " system became popular throughout the South following the American Civil War and continued into

2052-404: A real problem in the domestic penal system. There was also the hope that transported convicts could be rehabilitated and reformed by starting a new life in the colonies. In 1615, in the reign of James I , a committee of the council had already obtained the power to choose from the prisoners those that deserved pardon and, consequently, transportation to the colonies. Convicts were chosen carefully:

2166-605: A result of the act. The Transportation, etc. Act 1784 ( 24 Geo. 3. Sess. 2 . c. 56) and the Transportation, etc. Act 1785 ( 25 Geo. 3 . c. 46) also resulted to help alleviate overcrowding. Both acts empowered the Crown to appoint certain places within his dominions, or outside them, as the destination for transported criminals; the acts would move convicts around the country as needed for labour, or where they could be utilized and accommodated. The overcrowding situation and

2280-517: A sentence could have been passed in that case immediately before the commencement of that Act. Imprisonment with hard labour was abolished by section 1(2) of that Act. Penal servitude was abolished for Northern Ireland by section 1(1) of the Criminal Justice Act (Northern Ireland) 1953 . Every enactment which operated to empower a court to pass a sentence of penal servitude in any case now operates so as to empower that court to pass

2394-551: A sentence of imprisonment for a term not exceeding the maximum term of penal servitude for which a sentence could have been passed in that case immediately before the commencement of that Act. Imprisonment with hard labour was abolished by section 1(2) of that Act. Penal servitude was abolished in Scotland by section 16(1) of the Criminal Justice (Scotland) Act 1949 on 12 June 1950, and imprisonment with hard labour

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2508-434: A sentence of penal servitude, the maximum term of imprisonment may not exceed five years or any greater term authorised by the enactment. Imprisonment with hard labour was abolished by section 11(3) of that Act. Most Japanese prisoners are required to engage in prison labour, often in manufacturing parts which are then sold cheaply to private Japanese companies. This practice has raised charges of unfair competition since

2622-590: A significant portion were women. Some were as young as 10 when convicted and transported to Australia. Most were guilty of relatively minor crimes like theft of food/clothes/small items, but some were convicted of serious crimes like rape or murder. Convict status was not inherited by children, and convicts were generally freed after serving their sentence, although many died during transportation or during their sentence. Convict assignment (sending convicts to work for private individuals) occurred in all penal colonies aside from Western Australia , and can be compared with

2736-567: A specific term. To provide confinement facilities, the general change in sentencing was passed in conjunction with the Convict Prisons Act 1853 ( 16 & 17 Vict. c. 121), long titled "An Act for providing Places of Confinement in England or Wales for Female Offenders under Sentence or Order of Transportation." The Penal Servitude Act 1857 ( 20 & 21 Vict. c. 3) ended the sentence of transportation in virtually all cases, with

2850-681: A standard feature. Although it was prescribed for severe crimes (e.g. rape, attempted murder, wounding with intent, by the Offences against the Person Act 1861 ) it was also widely applied in cases of minor crime, such as petty theft and vagrancy , as well as victimless behaviour deemed harmful to the fabric of society. Notable recipients of hard labour under British law include the prolific writer Oscar Wilde (after his conviction for gross indecency ), imprisoned in Reading Gaol . Labour

2964-482: A term not exceeding the maximum term of penal servitude for which a sentence could have been passed in that case immediately before the commencement of the Criminal Law Act 1997. In the case of any enactment in force on 5 August 1891 (the date on which section 1 of the Penal Servitude Act 1891 came into force) whereby a court had, immediately before the commencement of the Criminal Law Act 1997, power to pass

3078-604: A viable punishment. This was removed by Act No. XVII of 1949, known as the Criminal Law (Removal of Racial Discriminations) Act, 1949 Penal servitude was abolished in Ireland by section 11(1) of the Criminal Law Act, 1997 . Every enactment conferring a power on a court to pass a sentence of penal servitude in any case must be treated as an enactment empowering that court to pass a sentence of imprisonment for

3192-458: A week. On 30 January 2017, seven detainees were involved in a riot . They forced themselves on to the roof of an accommodation unit and caused severe damage to the centre's infrastructure as well as injuring staff. 27°35′29″S 152°54′47″E  /  27.5915°S 152.9131°E  / -27.5915; 152.9131 This article about an Australian prison is a stub . You can help Misplaced Pages by expanding it . This article about

3306-408: Is a form of forced labour used in both the past and the present as an additional form of punishment beyond imprisonment alone. Punitive labour encompasses two types: productive labour, such as industrial work; and intrinsically pointless tasks used as primitive occupational therapy , punishment, or physical torment. Sometimes authorities turn prison labour into an industry, as on a prison farm or in

3420-567: Is estimated that there may have been 5–7 million people in these camps at any one time. In later years the camps also held victims of Joseph Stalin's purges as well as World War II prisoners . It is possible that approximately 10% of prisoners died each year. Out of the 91,000 German soldiers captured after the Battle of Stalingrad , only 6,000 survived the Gulag and returned home. Many of these prisoners, however, had died of illness contracted during

3534-529: The Auburn Prison System 's main architects Elam Lynds, stating: ...Lynds aimed for profit. To him, a prisoner was like a slave, a machine, or a river: a resource to be exploited. Therefore the extraction of prisoners' labor, like that of slaves, should be limited by only the capacity of their human bodies. He believed that incarcerated men had no inherent right to benefit from their labor -vocationally, morally, or otherwise. Lynds's ideal prisoner

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3648-496: The British Empire during the 18th and 19th centuries. Transportation removed the offender from society, mostly permanently, but was seen as more merciful than capital punishment . This method was used for criminals, debtors, military prisoners, and political prisoners. Penal transportation was also used as a method of colonization . For example, from the earliest days of English colonial schemes, new settlements beyond

3762-848: The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) were arrested and re-educated in the spirit of anti-communism at the Northwestern Youth Labor Camp . After the CCP took power in 1949 and established the People's Republic of China , laojiao ( Re-education through labour ) and laogai ( Reform through labour ) was (and still is in some cases) used as a way to punish political prisoners . They were intended not only for criminals, but also for those deemed to be counter-revolutionary (political and/or religious prisoners). Often these prisoners are used to produce products for export to

3876-607: The Dreyfus Affair , and Dreyfus was fully exonerated in 1906. Unlike normal penal transportation, many Soviet people were transported as criminals in forms of deportation being proclaimed as enemies of people in a form of collective punishment . During the Second World War , the Soviet Union transported up to 1.9 million people from its western republics to Siberia and the Central Asian republics of

3990-508: The Federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP) to produce goods and services. FPI is restricted to selling its products and services, which include clothing, furniture, electrical components and vehicle parts, to federal government agencies and has no access to the commercial market so as not to compete against private employment. State prison systems also use penal labour and have their own penal labour divisions. This has changed over time since

4104-583: The Home Counties . The "Felons' Act" (as the Transportation Act was called) was printed and distributed in 1718, and in April twenty-seven men and women were sentenced to transportation. The Act led to significant changes: both petty and grand larceny were punished by transportation (seven years), and the sentence for any non-capital offence was at the judge's discretion. In 1723 an Act

4218-624: The Indian Rebellion of 1857 . As the Indian independence movement swelled, so did the number of prisoners who were penally transported. The Cellular Jail in Port Blair , South Andaman Island , also called Kālā Pānī or Kalapani (Hindi for black waters), was constructed between 1896 and 1906 as a high-security prison with 698 individual cells for solitary confinement . Surviving prisoners were repatriated in 1937. The penal settlement

4332-650: The Myall Creek Massacre . In the Hawkesbury and Nepean Wars , a group of Irish convicts joined the Aboriginal coalition of Eora , Gandangara , Dharug and Tharawal nations in their fight against the colonists. Norfolk Island , east of the Australian mainland, was a convict penal settlement from 1788 to 1794, and again from 1824 to 1847. In 1803, Van Diemen's Land (modern-day Tasmania)

4446-560: The NKVD massacred about 100,000 prisoners who awaited deportation either to NKVD prisons in Moscow or to the Gulag. Inmates in Taiwan are required to work during their stay in prison but receive a wage for their labour. Federal Prison Industries (FPI; doing business as UNICOR since 1977) is a wholly owned United States government corporation created in 1934 that uses penal labour from

4560-518: The National Minimum Wage Act 1998 , prisoners are excluded from the national minimum wage. Penal servitude was abolished for England and Wales by section 1(1) of the Criminal Justice Act 1948 . Every enactment conferring power on a court to pass a sentence of penal servitude in any case must be construed as conferring power to pass a sentence of imprisonment for a term not exceeding the maximum term of penal servitude for which

4674-668: The Nine Years' War ) and the War of the Spanish Succession (1701–14) adversely affected merchant shipping and hence transportation. In the post-war period there was more crime and hence potentially more executions, and something needed to be done. In the reigns of Queen Anne (1702–14) and George I (1714–27), transportation was not easily arranged, but imprisonment was not considered enough to punish hardened criminals or those who had committed capital offences, so transportation

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4788-467: The Parliament of Great Britain specifically extended the usage of transportation to Scotland. It remained little used under Scots Law until the early 19th century. In Australia, a convict who had served part of his time might apply for a ticket of leave , permitting some prescribed freedoms . This enabled some convicts to resume a more normal life, to marry and raise a family, and to contribute to

4902-522: The Restoration , the penal transportation system and the number of people subjected to it, started to change inexorably between 1660 and 1720, with transportation replacing the simple discharge of clergyable felons after branding the thumb . Alternatively, under the second act dealing with Moss-trooper brigands on the Scottish border, offenders had their benefit of clergy taken away, or otherwise at

5016-483: The benefit of clergy , was a fundamental feature of the penal system, but to prevent its abuse, this pardoning process was used more strictly. Prisoners were carefully selected for transportation based on information about their character and previous criminal record. It was arranged that they fail the reading test, but they were then reprieved and held in jail, without bail, to allow time for a royal pardon (subject to transportation) to be organised. Transportation became

5130-458: The treadmill , shot drill, and the crank machine . Treadmills for punishment were used for decades in British prisons beginning in 1818; they often took the form of large paddle wheels some 20 feet in diameter with 24 steps around a six-foot cylinder. Prisoners had to work six or more hours a day, climbing the equivalent of 5,000 to 14,000 vertical feet. While the purpose was mainly punitive,

5244-401: The treadmill . In some cases, it was productive labour to grind grain (an example of using convict labour to meet costs); in others, it served no purpose. Similar punishments included turning the crank machine or carrying cannonballs. Semi-punitive labour also included oakum -picking: teasing apart old tarry rope to make caulking material for sailing vessels. Imprisonment with hard labour

5358-608: The 1820s to increase the prison's profits and support the prison financially. As historian Robin Bernstein demonstrates, this system of for-profit prison labor expanded to other state prisons throughout the United States within the next fifteen years, well before the convict-leasing system of the post-Civil War era. The 13th Amendment of the US Constitution , enacted in 1865, explicitly allows penal labour as it states that "neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as

5472-658: The 1820s until the 1860s, convicts were sent to the Imperial fortress colony of Bermuda (part of British North America ) to work on the construction of the Royal Naval Dockyard and other defence works, including at the East End of the archipelago, where they were accommodated aboard the hulk of HMS Thames at an area still known as " Convict Bay ", at St. George's town. In 1787, the First Fleet ,

5586-523: The 1950s. Only convicts sentenced to "rigorous imprisonment" have to undertake work during their prison term. A 2011 Hindustan Times article reported that 99% of convicts that receive such sentences rarely undertake work because most prisons in India do not have sufficient demand for prison labour. In the Indian Penal Code prior to 1949, Many sections prescribed penal servitude for life as

5700-510: The 20th century. Yet, as historian Robin Bernstein demonstrates, the convict leasing system and the use of prison labor for profit began well before the Civil War in Auburn, New York . During this early period of convict leasing, prisoners at Auburn Prison were not paid for their labor. Bernstein explains the reasoning behind this refusal to pay wages to prison laborers in her analysis of one of

5814-647: The Acts of the Privy Council showed that prisoners "for strength of bodie or other abilities shall be thought fit to be employed in foreign discoveries or other services beyond the Seas". During the Commonwealth , Oliver Cromwell overcame the popular prejudice against subjecting Christians to slavery or selling them into foreign parts, and initiated group transportation of military and civilian prisoners. With

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5928-503: The Australian population (about 7 million) had Irish ancestry – the highest percentage outside of Ireland – thanks partially to historical convict transportation. In British India – including the province of Burma (now Myanmar ) and the port of Karachi (now part of Pakistan ) – Indian independence activists were penally transported to the Andaman Islands . A penal colony was established there in 1857 with prisoners from

6042-687: The Congo-Ocean railway (140 km or 87 miles) cost the lives of 17,000 indigenous workers in 1929. In Cameroon, the 6,000 workers on the Douala-Yaoundé railway line had a mortality rate of 61.7% according to a report by the authorities. Forced labour was officially abolished in the colonies in 1946 under pressure from the Rassemblement démocratique africain and the French Communist Party . In fact, it lasted well into

6156-479: The Crown to merchants contracted to take the convicts to America. The Transportation Act made returning from transportation a capital offence . The number of convicts transported to North America is not verified: John Dunmore Lang has estimated 50,000, and Thomas Keneally has proposed 120,000. Maryland received a larger felon quota than any other province. Many prisoners were taken in battle from Ireland or Scotland and sold into indentured servitude , usually for

6270-465: The Gulag were ordinary criminals: between 1934 and 1953 there were only two years, 1946 and 1947, when the number of counter-revolutionary prisoners exceeded that of ordinary criminals, partly because the Soviet state had amnestied 1 million ordinary criminals as part of the victory celebrations in 1945. At the height of the purges in the 1930s political prisoners made up 12% of the camp population; at

6384-733: The High Court, to pass a sentence of imprisonment for a term exceeding three years. See section 221 of the Criminal Procedure (Scotland) Act 1975 and section 307(4) of the Criminal Procedure (Scotland) Act 1995 . In pre-Maoist China , a system of labour camps for political prisoners operated by the Kuomintang forces of Chiang Kai-shek existed during the Chinese Civil War from 1938 to 1949. Young activists and students accused of supporting Mao Zedong and

6498-511: The Netherlands, but a light variant consisting of community service (Dutch: taakstraf ) is one of the primary punishments which can be imposed on a convicted offender. The maximum punishment is 240 hours, according to article 22c, part 2 of Wetboek van Strafrecht . The labour must be done in their free time. Reclassering Nederland keeps track of those who were sentenced to community services. The Criminal Justice Act 1954 abolished

6612-475: The Old Bailey and the man who gave important information about capital offenders to the cabinet. One reason for the success of this Act was that transportation was financially costly. The system of sponsorship by merchants had to be improved. Initially the government rejected Thomson's proposal to pay merchants to transport convicts, but three months after the first transportation sentences were pronounced at

6726-469: The Old Bailey, his suggestion was proposed again, and the Treasury contracted Jonathan Forward , a London merchant, for the transportation to the colonies. The business was entrusted to Forward in 1718: for each prisoner transported overseas, he was paid £3 (equivalent to £590 in 2023), rising to £5 in 1727 (equivalent to £940 in 2023). The Treasury also paid for the transportation of prisoners from

6840-550: The Penal Servitude Act 1891 makes provision for enactments which authorise a sentence of penal servitude but do not specify a maximum duration. It must now be read subject to section 1(1) of the Criminal Justice Act 1948 . Sentences of penal servitude were served in convict prisons and were controlled by the Home Office and the Prison Commissioners . After sentencing, convicts would be classified according to

6954-458: The Union. Most were persons accused of treasonous collaboration with Nazi Germany, or of Anti-Soviet rebellion. Following death of Joseph Stalin , most of them were rehabilitated. Populations targeted included Volga Germans , Chechens , and Caucasian Turkic populations. The transportations had a twofold objective: to remove potential liabilities from the warfront, and to provide human capital for

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7068-590: The West . Xinjiang internment camps represent a source of penal labour in China according to Adrien Zenz . Since 2002, some prisoners have been eligible to receive payment for their labour. Prison inmates can work either for the prison (directly, by performing tasks linked to prison operation, or for the Régie Industrielle des Établissements Pénitentiaires, which produces and sells merchandise) or for

7182-448: The beginning of for-profit prisons in the United States. One of the first for-profit prisons was Auburn Prison , located in Auburn, New York, along the Owasco River . The prison was constructed in 1816 and prison labor was used to produce common goods like combs, shoes, animal harnesses, carpets, buckets, and barrels. Goods were originally produced and made for use inside the prison only, but expanded to produce products for outside sale in

7296-477: The border. After the termination of transportation to North America, British prisons became overcrowded, and dilapidated ships moored in various ports were pressed into service as floating gaols known as "hulks". Following an 18th-century experiment in transporting convicted prisoners to Cape Coast Castle (modern Ghana) and the Gorée (Senegal) in West Africa, British authorities turned their attention to New South Wales (in what would become Australia). From

7410-504: The community, and who, by proper care and correction, might be reclaimed from their evil course"; they then passed the Criminal Law Act 1776 ( 16 Geo. 3 . c. 43) "An act to authorize ... the punishment by hard labour of offenders who, for certain crimes, are or shall become liable to be transported to any of his Majesty's colonies and plantations." For the ensuing decade, men were instead sentenced to hard labour and women were imprisoned. Finding alternative locations to send convicts

7524-402: The conditions of convicts in the colonies were inhumane. Although a concerted programme of prison building ensued, the Short Titles Act 1896 lists seven other laws relating to penal transportation in the first half of the 19th century. The system of criminal punishment by transportation, as it had developed over nearly 150 years, was officially ended in Britain in the 1850s, when that sentence

7638-438: The continent, would differentiate it from America, where the use of convicts was only a minor adjunct to its overall policy. In 1787, when transportation resumed to the chosen Australian colonies, the far greater distance added to the terrible experience of exile, and it was considered more severe than the methods of imprisonment employed for the previous decade. The Transportation Act 1790 ( 30 Geo. 3 . c. 47) officially enacted

7752-444: The development of the colony. In England in the 17th and 18th centuries criminal justice was severe, later termed the Bloody Code . This was due to both the particularly large number of offences which were punishable by execution (usually by hanging), and to the limited choice of sentences available to judges for convicted criminals. With modifications to the traditional benefit of clergy , which originally exempted only clergymen from

7866-632: The distinction between imprisonment with and without hard labour and replaced 'reformative detention' with 'corrective training', which was later abolished on 30 June 2002. North Korean prison camps can be differentiated into internment camps for political prisoners ( Kwan-li-so in Korean) and reeducation camps (Kyo-hwa-so in Korean). According to human rights organisations, the prisoners face forced hard labour in all North Korean prison camps. The conditions are harsh and life-threatening and prisoners are subject to torture and inhumane treatment. Another historically significant example of forced labour

7980-522: The early 1600s until the American Revolution of 1776, the British colonies in North America received transported British criminals. Destinations were the island colonies of the West Indies and the mainland colonies that became the United States of America. In the 17th century transportation was carried out at the expense of the convicts or the shipowners. The Transportation Act 1717 allowed courts to sentence convicts to seven years' transportation to America. In 1720, an extension authorized payments by

8094-423: The end of the 17th century and beyond, but they diminished in 1670 due to certain complications. The colonial opposition was one of the main obstacles: colonies were unwilling to collaborate in accepting prisoners: the convicts represented a danger to the colony and were unwelcome. Maryland and Virginia enacted laws to prohibit transportation in 1670, and the king was persuaded to respect these. The penal system

8208-510: The exception of those years, the Transportation Act led to a decrease in whipping of convicts, thus avoiding potentially inflammatory public displays. Clergyable discharge continued to be used when the accused could not be transported for reasons of age or infirmity. Penal transportation was not limited to men or even to adults. Men, women, and children were sentenced to transportation, but its implementation varied by sex and age. From 1660 to 1670, highway robbery, burglary , and horse theft were

8322-605: The first permanent European settlement in Australia. This marked the beginning of the European colonisation of Australia . Violent conflict on the Australian frontier between indigenous Australians and the colonists began only months after the First Fleet landed, lasting over a century. Convicts forced to work in the bush on the frontier were sometimes the victims of indigenous attacks, while convicts and ex-convicts also attacked indigenous people in some instances, such as

8436-422: The general criminal law, it developed into a legal fiction by which many common offenders of "clergyable" offences were extended the privilege to avoid execution. Many offenders were pardoned as it was considered unreasonable to execute them for relatively minor offences, but under the rule of law , it was equally unreasonable for them to escape punishment entirely. With the development of colonies, transportation

8550-450: The government organisation that was in charge of them. The Soviet Gulag camps were a continuation of the punitive labour system of Imperial Russia known as katorga , but on a larger scale. The kulaks were some of the first victims of the Soviet Union's forced labour system. Starting in 1930, nearly two million kulaks were taken to camps in unpopulated regions of the Soviet Union and forced to work in very harsh conditions. Most inmates in

8664-431: The impoverished state governments could not afford penitentiaries, they leased out prisoners to work at private firms. Reformers abolished convict leasing in the 20th-century Progressive Era . At the same time, labour has been required at many prisons. Penal transportation Penal transportation (or simply transportation ) was the relocation of convicted criminals, or other persons regarded as undesirable, to

8778-457: The judge's discretion, were to be transported to America, "there to remaine and not to returne". There were various influential agents of change: judges' discretionary powers influenced the law significantly, but the king's and Privy Council's opinions were decisive in granting a royal pardon from execution. The system changed one step at a time: in February 1663, after that first experiment,

8892-400: The mills could have been used to grind grain, pump water, or operate a ventilation system. Shot drill involved stooping without bending the knees, lifting a heavy cannonball slowly to chest height, taking three steps to the right, replacing it on the ground, stepping back three paces, and repeating, moving cannonballs from one pile to another. The crank machine was a device which turned

9006-464: The novel Papillon , a semi-autobiographical novel of his incarceration in and escape from a penal colony in French Guiana . The most significant individual transported prisoner is probably French army officer Alfred Dreyfus , wrongly convicted of treason in a trial in 1894, held in an atmosphere of antisemitism . He was sent to Devil's Island. The case became a cause célèbre known as

9120-526: The number of men whipped and released diminished, but whipping and discharge were chosen more often for women. The reverse was true when women were sentenced for a capital offence, but actually served a lesser sentence due to a manipulation of the penal system: one advantage of this sentence was that they could be discharged thanks to benefit of clergy while men were whipped. Women with young children were also supported since transportation unavoidably separated them. The facts and numbers revealed how transportation

9234-473: The offences most often punishable with transportation for men. In those years, five of the nine women who were transported after being sentenced to death were guilty of simple larceny, an offence for which benefit of clergy was not available for women until 1692. Also, merchants preferred young and able-bodied men for whom there was a demand in the colonies. All these factors meant that most women and children were simply left in jail. Some magistrates supported

9348-406: The option of being sentenced to transportation was allowed. Depending on the crime, the sentence was imposed for life or for a set period of years. If imposed for a period of years, the offender was permitted to return home after serving their time, but had to make their own way back. Many offenders thus stayed in the colony as free persons, and might obtain employment as jailers or other servants of

9462-626: The penal colony. England transported an estimated 50,000 to 120,000 convicts and political prisoners, as well as prisoners of war from Scotland and Ireland , to its overseas colonies in the Americas from the 1610s until early in the American Revolution in 1776, when transportation to America was temporarily suspended by the Criminal Law Act 1776 ( 16 Geo. 3 . c. 43). The practice was mandated in Scotland by an act of 1785, but

9576-554: The practice of convict leasing in the United States. Transportation from Great Britain and Ireland ended at different times in different colonies, with the last being in 1868, although it had become uncommon several years earlier thanks to the loosening of laws in Britain, changing sentiment in Australia, and groups such as the Anti-Transportation League . In 2015, an estimated 20% of the Australian population had convict ancestry. In 2013, an estimated 30% of

9690-495: The previous orders in council into law, stating "his Majesty hath declared and appointed... that the eastern coast of New South Wales, and the islands thereunto adjacent, should be the place or places beyond the seas to which certain felons, and other offenders, should be conveyed and transported ... or other places". The act also gave "authority to remit or shorten the time or term" of the sentence "in cases where it shall appear that such felons, or other offenders, are proper objects of

9804-468: The prisoners' wages are far below market rate. During the early Meiji era , in Hokkaido many prisoners were forced to engage in road construction ( Shūjin dōro ( 囚人道路 ) ), mining , and railroad construction , which were severe. It was thought to be a form of unfree labour . It was replaced by indentured servitude ( Takobeya-rōdō ( タコ部屋労働 ) ). (Hard) penal labour does not exist in

9918-533: The resumption of transportation would be initially resolved by Orders in Council on 6 December 1786, by the decision to establish a penal colony in New South Wales , on land previously claimed for Britain in 1770, but as yet not settled by Britain or any other European power. The British policy toward Australia, specifically for use as a penal colony , within their overall plans to populate and colonise

10032-410: The royal mercy" At the beginning of the 19th century, transportation for life became the maximum penalty for several offences which had previously been punishable by death. With complaints starting in the 1830s, sentences of transportation became less common in 1840 since the system was perceived to be a failure: crime continued at high levels, people were not dissuaded from committing felonies, and

10146-455: The seas were seen as a way to alleviate domestic social problems of criminals and the poor as well as to increase the colonial labour force, for the overall benefit of the realm. Initially based on the royal prerogative of mercy , and later under English law , transportation was an alternative sentence imposed for a felony . It was typically imposed for offences for which death was deemed too severe. By 1670, as new felonies were defined,

10260-573: The seriousness of the offence of which they were convicted and their criminal record. First time offenders would be classified in the Star class; persons not suitable for the Star class, but without serious convictions would be classified in the intermediate class. Habitual offenders would be classified in the Recidivist class. Care was taken to ensure that convicts in one class did not mix with convicts in another. Penal servitude included hard labour as

10374-485: The settlement and industrialization of the largely underpopulated eastern regions. The policy continued until February 1956, when Nikita Khrushchev in his speech, " On the Personality Cult and Its Consequences ", condemned the transportation as a violation of Leninist principles. Whilst the policy itself was rescinded, the transported populations did not begin to return to their original metropoles until after

10488-477: The siege of Stalingrad and in the forced march into captivity. More than half of all deaths occurred in 1941–1944, mostly as a result of the deteriorating food and medicine supplies caused by wartime shortages. Probably the worst of the camp complexes were the three built north of the Arctic Circle at Kolyma , Norilsk and Vorkuta . Prisoners in Soviet labour camps were sometimes worked to death with

10602-541: The terms of sentence initially being of the same duration as transportation. While transport was greatly reduced following enactment of the 1857 act, the last convicts sentenced to transportation arrived in Western Australia in 1868. During the 80 years of its use to Australia, the number of transported convicts totalled about 162,000 men and women. Over time the alternative terms of imprisonment would be somewhat reduced from their terms of transportation. From

10716-404: The time of Joseph Stalin 's death just over one-quarter. In the 1930s, many ordinary criminals were guilty of crimes that would have been punished with a fine or community service in the 1920s. They were victims of harsher laws from the early 1930s, driven, in part, by the need for more prison camp labour. The Gulags constituted a large portion of the Soviet Union's overall economy. Over half of

10830-740: The tin produced in the Soviet Union was produced by the Gulags. In 1951, the Gulags extracted over four times as much gold as the rest of the economy. Gulag camps also produced all of the diamonds and platinum in the Soviet Union, and forced labourers in the Gulags constituted approximately one fifth of all construction labourers in the Soviet Union. Between 1930 and 1960, the Soviet regime created many labour camps in Siberia and Central Asia . There were at least 476 separate camp complexes, each one comprising hundreds, even thousands of individual camps. It

10944-475: Was "reduced to a silent insulated human working machine." New York State's Auburn Prison was not the only prison to adopt such practices. From 1817-1844, seventeen states across the United States North, South, and West, as well as Washington, D.C. and parts of Canada adopted this system. During Jim Crow former slaves were often arrested and worked in much the same way as before the war. Since

11058-410: Was abolished by section 16(2) of the act. Every enactment conferring power on a court to pass a sentence of penal servitude in any case must be construed as conferring power to pass a sentence of imprisonment for a term not exceeding the maximum term of penal servitude for which a sentence could have been passed in that case immediately before 12 June 1950. But this does not empower any court, other than

11172-403: Was also influenced by economics: the profits obtained from convicts' labour boosted the economy of the colonies and, consequently, of England. Nevertheless, it could be argued that transportation was economically deleterious because the aim was to enlarge population, not diminish it; but the character of an individual convict was likely to harm the economy. King William's War (1688–1697) (part of

11286-709: Was also settled as a penal colony, followed by the Moreton Bay Settlement (modern Brisbane , Queensland ) in 1824. The other Australian colonies were established as "free settlements", as non-convict colonies were known. However, the Swan River Colony (Western Australia) accepted transportation from England and Ireland in 1851, to resolve a long-standing labour shortage . Two penal settlements were established near modern-day Melbourne in Victoria but both were abandoned shortly after. Later,

11400-650: Was first introduced into English law with the Criminal Law Act 1776 ( 16 Geo. 3 . c. 43), also known as the " Hulks Act ", which authorised prisoners being put to work on improving the navigation of the River Thames in lieu of transportation to the North American colonies , which had become impossible due to the American War of Independence . The Penal Servitude Act 1853 (16 & 17 Vict. c. 99), substituted penal servitude for transportation to

11514-524: Was imposed on prisoners guilty of capital offences pardoned by the king. Returning from the colonies before the stated period was a capital offence. The bill was introduced by William Thomson , the Solicitor General , who was "the architect of the transportation policy". Thomson, a supporter of the Whigs, was Recorder of London and became a judge in 1729. He was a prominent sentencing officer at

11628-400: Was introduced as an alternative punishment, although legally it was considered a condition of a pardon, rather than a sentence in itself. Convicts who represented a menace to the community were sent away to distant lands. A secondary aim was to discourage crime for fear of being transported. Transportation continued to be described as a public exhibition of the king's mercy. It was a solution to

11742-593: Was introduced into the House of Commons in 1717 under the Whig government. It legitimised transportation as a direct sentence, thus simplifying the penal process. Non-capital convicts (clergyable felons usually destined for branding on the thumb, and petty larceny convicts usually destined for public whipping) were directly sentenced to transportation to the American colonies for seven years. A sentence of fourteen years

11856-655: Was less frequently applied to women and children because they were usually guilty of minor crimes and they were considered a minimal threat to the community. The outbreak of the American Revolutionary War (1775–1783) halted transportation to America. Parliament claimed that "the transportation of convicts to his Majesty's colonies and plantations in America ;... is found to be attended with various inconveniences, particularly by depriving this kingdom of many subjects whose labour might be useful to

11970-518: Was less used there than in England. Transportation on a large scale resumed with the departure of the First Fleet to Australia in 1787, and continued there until 1868 . Transportation was not used by Scotland before the Act of Union 1707 ; following union, the Transportation Act 1717 specifically excluded its use in Scotland. Under the Transportation, etc. Act 1785 ( 25 Geo. 3 . c. 46)

12084-544: Was not easy, and the act was extended twice by the Criminal Law Act 1778 ( 18 Geo. 3 . c. 62) and the Criminal Law Act 1779 ( 19 Geo. 3 . c. 54). This resulted in a 1779 inquiry by a parliamentary committee on the entire subject of transportation and punishment; initially the Penitentiary Act 1779 was passed, introducing a policy of state prisons as a measure to reform the system of overcrowded prison hulks that had developed, but no prisons were ever built as

12198-498: Was presented in Virginia to discourage transportation by establishing complex rules for the reception of prisoners, but the reluctance of colonies did not stop transportation. In a few cases before 1734, the court changed sentences of transportation to sentences of branding on the thumb or whipping, by convicting the accused for lesser crimes than those of which they were accused. This manipulation phase came to an end in 1734. With

12312-520: Was shut down in 1945. An estimated 80,000 political prisoners were transported to the Cellular Jail which became known for its harsh conditions, including forced labor; prisoners who went on hunger strikes were frequently force-fed . France transported convicts to Devil's Island and New Caledonia in the 19th and early-to-mid 20th centuries. Devil's Island, a French penal colony in Guiana ,

12426-400: Was sometimes useful. In Inveraray Jail from 1839 prisoners worked up to ten hours a day. Most male prisoners made herring nets or picked oakum (Inveraray was a busy herring port); those with skills were often employed where their skills could be used, such as shoemaking, tailoring or joinery. Female prisoners picked oakum, knitted stockings or sewed. Forms of labour for punishment included

12540-453: Was substituted by imprisonment with penal servitude , and intended to punish. The Penal Servitude Act 1853 ( 16 & 17 Vict. c. 99), long titled "An Act to substitute, in certain Cases, other Punishment in lieu of Transportation," enacted that with judicial discretion, lesser felonies, those subject to transportation for less than 14 years, could be sentenced to imprisonment with labour for

12654-471: Was temporarily prohibited during the French Revolution of 1848 . Prison labour then specialised in the production of goods sold to government departments (and directly to prisons, for example guards' uniforms), or in small low-skilled manual labour (mainly subcontracting to small local industries). Forced labour was widely used in the African colonies. One of the most emblematic projects, the construction of

12768-522: Was that of political prisoners and other persecuted people in labour camps , especially in totalitarian regimes since the 20th century where millions of convicts were exploited and often killed by hard labour and bad living conditions. For much of the history of the Soviet Union and other Communist states , political opponents of these governments were often sentenced to forced labour camps. These forced labour camps are called Gulags, an acronym for

12882-420: Was the preferred punishment. There were several obstacles to the use of transportation. In 1706 the reading test for claiming benefit of clergy was abolished ( 6 Ann. c. 9). This allowed judges to sentence "clergyable" offenders to a workhouse or a house of correction . But the punishments that then applied were not enough of a disincentive to commit crime: another solution was needed. The Transportation Act

12996-473: Was used for transportation from 1852 to 1953. New Caledonia became a French penal colony from the 1860s until the end of the transportations in 1897; about 22,000 criminals and political prisoners (most notably Communards ) were sent to New Caledonia. Henri Charrière (16 November 1906  – 29 July 1973) was a French writer, convicted in 1931 as a murderer by the French courts and pardoned in 1970. He wrote

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