Because there’s this small, emotional part of me that I can’t excise. 
Back when Australia was a penal colony it was very hard to leave - big oceans, large waves and long distances back to the UK.
These days you could sail or fly straight home without too much bother.
I suggest watching Papillon with Dustin Hoffman. Documents life in French penitentiary on Devil’s Island in French Guiana.
Hard to imagine we’d ever subject prisoners to that misery these days.
Has their ever been an open prison colony without cells or guards? Devils Island had cells. Prisoners didn’t just sleep on the beach. I’m not sure about Australia. Did they simply kick the prisoners off the boat and sail away?
The biggest concern would be the violence and oppression from more dangerous prisoners. Eventually you’d have riots and full scale war within the prison colony.
So much for inalienable rights, I guess.
No, the tranportees were put to work, either by the colonial government or rented out. The convicts weren’t free to wander away, either, they were prisoners for however long they were sentenced too. After their sentence was served, the prisoners were free to do as they liked, and could even return to Britain if they could ever scrape together the money to pay for their passage, which wasn’t exactly likely.
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It is against federal law to force an inmate to work. Prisons can restrict certain privileges in order to motivate inmates to work, however the days of being physically forced onto a chain gang and beaten or starved if you refused to work are over.
And I’m not sure what constitutes slave labor? Inmates have different jobs available depending on where and by whom they are incarcerated by. The basics include cooking in the kitchen, laundry, and cleaning the facility. The average wage is probably between $0.25 and $1.00 an hour. A low wage sure, but it’s not like they are paying rent, utilities, food, or medical. I have never seen or heard of a jail or prison that operates anywhere close to the black, because of labor generated by inmates.
Logically it would seem, that having a job would be a necessary step in the rehabilitative process. And I don’t see anything wrong with a prison utilizing capable inmates to cut down the costs of incarceration.