Prevention History of Corrections—Punishment or Rehabilitation? - The Rise Of Nations

In Europe in the 1500s, while most jails still housed people waiting for trial or punishment, work-houses and debtors' prisons developed as sources of cheap labor or places to house insane or minor offenders. Those found guilty of serious crimes could be transported instead of executed. England transported many prisoners to colonial Georgia in the United States and later to colonial Australia; France sent many to South America. Although transportation was a less severe punishment than the death penalty, many prisoners did not survive the harsh conditions either on board the transport ships or life in the early colonies to which they were sent.