A penal colony is a settlement used to exile prison

Prison

A prison is a place in which people are physically confined and, usually, deprived of a range of personal freedoms. Imprisonment or incarceration is a legal penalty that may be imposed by the state for the commission of a crime...

ers and separate them from the general populace 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.

Historically penal colonies

Colony

In politics and history, a colony is a territory under the immediate political control of a state. For colonies in antiquity, city-states would often found their own colonies. Some colonies were historically countries, while others were territories without definite statehood from their inception....

 have often been used for penal labour

Penal labour

Penal labour is a form of unfree labour in which prisoners perform work, typically manual labour. The work may be light or hard, depending on the context. Forms of sentence which involve penal labour include penal servitude and imprisonment with hard labour...

 in an economically underdeveloped part of a state's (usually colonial) territories, and on a far larger scale than a prison farm

Prison farm

A prison farm is a large correctional facility where penal labor convicts are put to economical use in a 'farm' , usually for manual labour, largely in open air, such as in agriculture, logging, quarrying, etc...

.