DEPORTATION or TRANSPORTATION, a system of punishment for crime, of which the essential factor is the removal of the criminal to a penal settlement outside his own country. It is to be distinguished from mere expulsion (q.v.) from a country, though the term "deportation" is now used in that sense in English law under the Aliens Act i 9o5 (see ALIEN). Strictly, the deportation or transportation system has ceased to exist in Eng land, though the removal or exclusion of undesirable persons from British territory, under various Orders in Council, is pos sible in places subject to the Foreign Jurisdiction Acts, and in the case of criminals under the Extradition Acts.
English Practice.—At a time when the British statute-book bristled with capital felonies, when the pickpocket or sheep stealer was hanged out of hand, when Sir Samuel Romilly, to whose strenuous exertions the amelioration of the penal code is in a great measure due, declared that the laws of England were written in blood, another and less sanguinary penalty came into great favour. The deportation of criminals beyond the seas grew naturally out of the laws which prescribed banishment for certain offences. The Vagrancy Act, 39 Eliz., c. 4, contained in it the germ of transportation, by empowering justices in quarter ses sions to banish offenders and order them to be conveyed into such parts beyond the seas as should be assigned by the privy council. Full effect was given to this statute in the next reign, as is proved by a letter of James I., dated 1619, in which the king directs "a hundred dissolute persons" to be sent to Virginia. The statute, 18 Car. II., c. 3, gave power to transport to America notorious thieves in Cumberland and Northumberland. Trans portation to the American colonies ceased with the achievement of their independence in 1776.
The British legislature, however, discovered that transportation to the colonies was bound to be attended by various incon veniences, particularly by depriving the kingdom of many sub jects whose labour might be useful to the community; and an Act was accordingly passed which provides that convicts sen tenced to transportation might be employed at hard labour at home. At the same time the consideration of some scheme for their disposal was entrusted to three eminent public men—Sir William Blackstone, Mr. Eden (afterwards Lord Auckland) and John Howard. The result of their labours was an act for the establishment of penitentiary houses, dated 1778. This act is of peculiar importance. It contains the first public enunciation of a general principle of prison treatment, and shows that even at that early date the system since nearly universally adopted was fully understood. The object in view was thus stated. It was hoped "by sobriety, cleanliness and medical assistance, by a reg ular series of labour, by solitary confinement during the inter vals of work and by due religious instruction to preserve and amend the health of the unhappy offenders, to inure them to habits of industry, to guard them from pernicious company, to accustom them to serious reflection and to teach them both the principles and practice of every Christian and moral duty." However, the new and vast territories of Australasia promised an unlimited field for convict colonization, and for the moment the scheme for penitentiary houses fell to the ground. "There was general confidence," says Merivale in his work on coloniza tion, "in the favourite theory that the best mode of punishing offenders was that which removed them from the scene of offence and temptation, cut them off by a great gulf of space from all their former connections, and gave them the opportunity of re deeming past crimes by becoming useful members of society." These views so far prevailed that an expedition consisting of nine transports and two men-of-war, the "first fleet" of Australian annals, sailed in March 1787 for New South Wales. A few free families also were encouraged to emigrate, but they were lost in the mass they were intended to leaven, swamped and outnum bered by the convicts, shiploads of whom continued to pour in year after year. When the influx increased, difficulties as to their employment arose. Free settlers were too few to give work to more than a small proportion. Moreover, a new policy was in the ascendant, initiated by Governor Macquarie, who considered the convicts and their rehabilitation his chief care, and steadily dis couraged the immigration of any but those who "came out for their country's good." The great bulk of the convict labour thus remained in government hands.
Some change in system was inevitable, and the plan of "as signment" was introduced ; in other words, that of freely lending the convicts to any who would relieve the authorities of the burdensome charge ; but this system in its turn developed its own abuses. The story of effort and failure and scandal is too long to be told here. Sufficient to say that, chiefly owing to Australian protests, the system was abandoned in 1840 and finally abolished by the Penal Servitude Acts, 1855 and 1857. The measures taken to substitute other methods of secondary punishment are set forth in the article PRISON (q.v.).
In 1864, however, it was possible to divert the stream else where. New Caledonia in the Australian Pacific was annexed to France in 18J3. Ten years later it became a new settlement for convict emigrants. A first shipload was disembarked in 1864 at Noumea, and the foundations of the city laid. Prison buildings were the first erected and were planted upon the island of Nou, a small breakwater to the Bay of Noumea. Outwardly all went well under the fostering care of the authorities. The population steadily increased; an average total of 600 in 1867 rose in the following year to 1,554. In 1874 the convict population ex ceeded 5,000 ; in 188o it had risen to 8,000; the total reached 9,608 at the end of Dec. 1883. But from that time forward the numbers transported annually fell, for it was found that this South Pacific island, with its fertile soil and fairly temperate climate, by no means intimidated the dangerous classes ; and the French administration therefore resumed deportation of French born whites to Guiana, which was known as notoriously unhealthy and was likely to act as a more positive deterrent. The author ities divided their exiles between the two outlets, choosing New Caledonia for the convicts who gave some promise of regeneration, and sending criminals with the worst antecedents and presumably incorrigible to the settlements on the equator. This was in effect to hand over a fertile colony entirely to criminals. Free immigra tion to New Caledonia was checked, and the colony became al most exclusively penal. The natural growth of a prosperous colonial community made no advance, and convict labour did little to stimulate it, the public works, essential for development, and construction of roads were neglected; there was no extensive clearance of lands, no steady development of agriculture. From 1898 simple deportation practically ceased, but the islands were full of convicts already sent, and they still received the product of the latest invention in the criminal code known as "relegation," a punishment directed against the recidivist or incorrigible crim inal whom no penal retribution had hitherto touched and whom the French law felt justified in banishing for ever to the "back of beyond." A certain period of time spent in a hard labour prison preceded relegation, but the convicts on arrival were gen erally unfitted to assist in colonization. They were for the most part decadent, morally and physically ; their labour was of no substantial value to colonists or themselves, and there was small hope of profitable result when they gained conditional liberation, with a concession of colonial land and a possibility of rehabilita tion by their own efforts abroad. Thus, the punishment of rele gation was not long in favour, and it has now been practically abandoned.
Russia.—Penal exile has been practised by some other coun tries as a method of secondary punishment. From 1823 onwards Russia directed a stream of offenders, mainly political, upon Siberia, and at one time the yearly average sent was 18,000. The Siberian exile system belongs only in part to penitentiary science, but it was punitive and aimed at regeneration of the indi vidual and the development of the soil by new settlements. Al though the journey was made mostly on foot and not by sea transport, the principle of deportation (or more exactly of re moval) was the essence of the system. The later practice, how ever, has been exactly similar to transportation as originated by England and afterwards followed by France. The penal coloniza tion of the island of Sakhalin reproduced the preceding methods, and the Russian convicts were conveyed by ships through the Suez canal to the Far East. Sakhalin was hopefully intended as an outlet for released convicts and their rehabilitation by their own efforts, precisely in the manner tried in Australia and New Caledonia. The result repeated previous experiences. There was land to reclaim, forests to cut down, marshes to drain, everything but a temperate climate and a good will of the felon labourers to create a prosperous colony. But the convicts would not work; a few sought to win the right to occupy a concession of soil, but the bulk were pure vagabonds, wandering to and fro in search of food. The agricultural enterprise was a complete failure. The wrong sites for cultivation were chosen, the labourers were un skilled and they handled very indifferent tools. Want amounting to starvation was a constant rule; the rations were insufficient and unwholesome--very little meat eked out with salt fish and with entire absence of vegetables. The general tone of morals was inconceivably low, and a universal passion for alcohol and card-playing prevailed. According to one authority the life of the convicts at Sakhalin was a frightful nightmare, "a mixture of debauchery and innocence mixed with real sufferings and almost inconceivable privations, corrupt in every one of its phases." The prisons hopelessly ruined all who entered them, all classes being indiscriminatingly herded together. It is now generally allowed that deportation, as practiced, had utterly failed, the chief reasons being the unmanageable numbers sent and the absence of outlets for their employment, even at great cost.
Italy.—Italy has practised deportation in planting various agricultural colonies upon the islands to be found on her coast. They were meant to imitate the intermediate prisons of the Irish system, where prisoners might work out their redemption, when provisionally released. Two were established on the islands of Pianoso and Gorgona, and there were settlements made on Monte Cristo and Capraia. They were used also to give effect to the system of enforced residence or domicilio coatto.