Do prison planets make sense?

[someone_else]

Frankly, if you're so evil to need Prison Planets in the first place you'll probably realize how wasteful is not exploiting such cheap and plentiful labor and decide for a more accessible sistemation that produces something useful for The Big Evil Empire.

[Rayo Azul]

I would guess that it all depends on the culture behind it. Taking into account that we, as others have said, need relatively "cheap" space travel as a given, the question might be what crime requires that they be incarcerated on such a planet? The criminals would have to be the nastiest badasses in the universe, or at least a couple of universes, right? Their crimes would have to warrant the necessity of segregating them from all their peers, and if this is so, the planet would have to be isolated from the rest of humanity/alienkind. If they were bad enough not to be imprisioned on their own worlds, or just executed (again there's the culture issue - life sentences or death sentences) then the world would have to be impossible to escape.

Then cost enters. To segregate an entire planet, you would need high-tech orbial defense systems. Your buddies might want to get you out of there, but space mines or weapons platforms would be needed to deter them. I guess I can't get past the fact that a home planet would deal with these criminals in their own way.

The only other way I could see it work would be as a gulag or Australia-type idea as already mentioned. Colonize new and deadly worlds for us or opt for your own execution. You choose. A sort of terra-forming shock troops. Seed a planet and see if they survive. If it works, send in the military later, scoop them up and send them somewhere new. Might be a cheaper option I suppose? Give them just enough tech to survive, but what happens to the guards or overseers?

As a storyline it's been used effectively, they've even made movies out of it. Just can't get away with it myself though.

[Lord of the Abyss]

Frankly, if you're so evil to need Prison Planets in the first place you'll probably realize how wasteful is not exploiting such cheap and plentiful labor and decide for a more accessible sistemation that produces something useful for The Big Evil Empire.

Unless one of the goals is terror. Like A Planet Called Treason, where the leaders of an attempted coup and their families were dumped on a planet with essentially no accessible metal, as an example and threat to anyone else who might rebel.

[Mr Bean]

A lot depends on the science-fiction universe being written. If space travel is expensive and rare and difficult, and/or habitable worlds are rare and precious, then you shouldn't see a prison planet. But if space travel (and habitable worlds) are fairly routine, then you might see prison planets being used, but you face something of a conundrum-- if space travel is easy, then you have to constantly guard the planet to make sure a convict's buddies don't come and spring him... which seems to defeat the purpose of having a prison planet as a "cheap" alternative, a stop-and-drop with no sustainability costs.

Prison planets are kind of odd ideas, though. Superficially, they are probably seen as a "humane" form of life imprisonment without parole, or an alternative to a death penalty. The people who designate a planet to become a penal colony probably pat themselves on the back about how civilized they are, and how their society doesn't torture or incarcerate their convicts. But on the planet, you're fairly well guaranteed to have a society of violence and brutality, and anyone being dropped off is headed for a lifetime of "cruel and unusual" punishment unless they can fight their way to the top of a local food chain. Any female convicts dropped off are almost certainly looking forward to a lifetime of rape and enslavement, if current criminal demographics continue and violent males continue to outnumber violent females.

The best way a prison planet might make sense would be, rather, to have a planet become a sort of labor camp, with strict schedules and lots of guards, where the prisoners work to build products that offset the costs of their incarceration.

But Prison plants do make sense in the galactic war context as you can't put billions of soldiers scattered on your own planets, maybe you keep a few camps to send the Generals too for questioning but the massive amount of people you might end up with it makes sense to use the Prison planet camp method used by SecState. Space stations are valid alternative but depending on the number of prisoners you need to deal with a planet makes good sense as you can pack over a million camps each 100 miles distant from any other camp of lets save five hundred each here on Earth lets you plunk down an easy five billion on one planet with each camp so distant and to be unable to cooperate and still have the land left over for your island citadel to watch over the planet and land your prisoners for processing before being sent to a camp. Accepting thousand man camps doubles the number of people you could plunk down on a planet. With a less water centric world you could easily half a trillion PoW's on the same planet.

[Darmalus]

In the GURPS Infinite Worlds setting, the good guys have a prison planet they use because they don't want to kill people who were just in the wrong place at the wrong time, but they need to silence them anyway. Considering the types of things they do with a conveyor, dropping someone off on Coventry is probably one of the cheapest things they do.

Coventry is a Quantum 3 alternate in which humanity didn’t develop. It has one important and useful peculiarity: unassisted conveyors can’t enter or leave it – and neither can world-jumpers. And nobody knows why. This means the only access to Coventry is by projector assisted conveyor from Homeline.

The I-Cops use Coventry to isolate people who Know Too Much: outtimers who stumbled onto a Homeline operation; Homeliners who broke regulations; scientists abducted from other timelines because the Patrol feared they were too close to developing parachronic technology; and even disgruntled ex-employees of Infinity! The population also includes some voluntary settlers, rescued from crosstime disasters.

All sorts of adventures are possible on Coventry . . . including a rescue attempt from within Infinity, by employees who are morally opposed to the whole concept. The world itself is a pastoral TL4, with TL8 medicine.

In this setting it makes sense, because it only takes some time and electricity to do, and even if the prisoners organize an escape attempt, it can be defeated by the projector operators (safe in another universe) refusing to cooperate, making the captured conveyor useless. Sure, they have hostages, but killing them means the next conveyor arrives with soldiers and APCs instead of medical supplies and entertainment.

[Lord of the Abyss]

Also, in settings where you find prison planets, you also typically have the scenario where life bearing planets are both fairly plentiful and more-or-less habitable by humans. Unlike a space station that you have to build from scratch. If the planets are there and easily accessible, you might as well use them. It's not like, say, taking centuries to terraform Mars just to stick convicts there.

[sirocco]

Also, in settings where you find prison planets, you also typically have the scenario where life bearing planets are both fairly plentiful and more-or-less habitable by humans. Unlike a space station that you have to build from scratch. If the planets are there and easily accessible, you might as well use them. It's not like, say, taking centuries to terraform Mars just to stick convicts there.

On the other hand, dumping convicts on a Mars-like or near Mars-like planet could qualify for prison-planet-scenario setting. And if you have some basic terraformation or even some scattered underground bases with adequate supplies, it could easily evolve into battle royale i.e hellish prison.

[Sarevok]

One reason for prison planets might be, surprising as it may sound, they are humane ways to contain offenders. I mean consider the life people being locked up for life get in todays prison. Having an entire planet to explore and living in a social community/settlement beats rotting in a cell.

[fgalkin]

If one is operating in a setting where space travel is easy, "prison planets," would make quite a bit of sense. The people who say otherwise forget that the current western-style prison is not the only way of containing criminals. In this case, the system would function very similar to that of Imperial Russia's internal exile (as opposed to katorga), wherein the convicts would be forced to relocate into an area, and be forbidden to leave it for a period of time. Other than that, there were no other restrictions on their freedom. In this case, prison planets would be just like any other planet, except all traffic to and from the system would be controlled and unauthorized ships would be boarded or destroyed on sight.

If you have a galaxy-wide setting like SW, such planets are not only efficient but actually necessary due to economies of scale. When you have many trillions of convicts, a prison planet can contain billions of people and becomes cheaper and easier to operate that billions of small prisons scattered on other planets.

Have a very nice day.
-fgalkin

[someone_else]

Frankly, if you're so evil to need Prison Planets in the first place you'll probably realize how wasteful is not exploiting such cheap and plentiful labor and decide for a more accessible sistemation that produces something useful for The Big Evil Empire.

Unless one of the goals is terror. Like A Planet Called Treason, where the leaders of an attempted coup and their families were dumped on a planet with essentially no accessible metal, as an example and threat to anyone else who might rebel.

Don't forget news coverage. Just saying "i've fed them to my Evil Dragon and they suffered a lot" doesn't instill the same degree of terror than seeing them wither and die over the course of a few years while you make loads of money from the reality show about such people you dump in the wilderness of Planet Treason.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The main problem of prison planets has always been a catch-22: When it is cost-effective to ship people there, it becomes not-so-cost-effective to protect that planet from incoming ships.

I mean, how much prison worlds can be made safer than the homeworld's safest prison, with homeworld Military and Space Navy close and ready to act on its defence, optionally with the homeworld's impressive orbital batteries that can incinerate any fleet getting close?

That means you'll have to use Prison Planets for chicken-stealers and such low-power criminals, making it not so cost-effective on defence costs alone. Inmates cannot escape, ok, but you need to make sure that armed civilian spacecraft cannot blast away your guards to get at them too.

That means a few patrolling spacecraft and some anti-spaceship weapons in orbit or on the ground, plus all the people to man them.
The cost to make a prison on another world that is already defended for other reasons? Just the building itself plus guards.

[fgalkin]

Except that you're ignoring economies of scale. When you have trillions of convicts you would need hundreds of billions of prisons and tens of billions of guards. A planet with restricted access would be far more cost-effective when you don't have to bother actually segregating prisoners into cells, monitoring their every move, isolating them from the rest of the population, etc. A small fleet of ships interdicting all access to the world becomes massively cheaper than maintaining hundreds of billions of individual prisons. And no, you wouldn't put the dangerous prisoners who are flight risks there, this would be for petty offenses.

Have a very nice day.
-fgalkin

[Simon_Jester]

This is, in all probability, true.

Operating one prison on an otherwise desolate planet is a huge waste. Operating a million prisons on one planet... you can recoup a lot of the cost of blockading the place by not having to put so much effort into stopping criminals from escaping into the bush.

[Purple]

How about this proposal. You take anyone who breaks any law, no mater how big or small and generally anyone who disagrees with your politics. You dump them on some far away planet and put up some satellites to keep them from escaping. Other than that you leave them to their own devices. You can even deport entire families to this place.

[Simon_Jester]

Aside from this being tremendously inhumane,it's totally lacking in a sense of proportion.

Have you ever heard the phrase "as well hung for a sheep as hung for a lamb," Purple? Taking every person who commits petty crimes (such as jaywalking and shoplifting) and permanently exiling them from your civilization creates problems. Like a large percentage of your population going into exile in each generation. And no opportunity to correct the behavior of criminals and turn them into functioning citizens.

[Zixinus]

well, you get something like a prison planet, but only in the sense of "there are lots of people on this planet and they can't leave," not like "the entire population of the planet is either the inmates or the guards of Giant Alcatraz."

Similar thoughts exactly: prison planets can make sense if you don't think of it as a modern prison.

For example, Excalibur (Babylon 5 spin-off) had this: there was effectively a planet where cyborgs were. That wasn't the original intention, but it is that what ended up being.
You see, originally the Excalibur was sent to investigate the place and find these people, as well as arrest them if necessary as cryborgs were a bit of a problem. However, a series of events that I won't spoil here, ended up making the planet a prison-planet: the cryborgs can do whatever they want, as long as they don't leave.

Bablyon 5 would readily give us another example: telepaths. Telepaths in Babylon 5 are a minority group that become segregated from the mainline human populace. At one point, a war brakes out because of it (although we never get to see that). In the Babylon 5 universe, if you are discovered that you are a telepath you have three options:
1. Join the psi-core.
2. Take drugs that "kill you inside, bit-by-bit".
3. Go to prison.

Having a "prison-planet" readily would give a better third or even an alternative fourth option (and an ideal place to drop the condescending Byron and his cult): you pick a remote, mineral-poor (that is, lacking in materials that would allow you to make advanced tech) but habitable planet, take some colonization gear to allow them to get to self-subsentence and dump your telepaths on it.

If you do it properly, you don't even need to have a warship guarding the place. Just check up on the place from time to time. If anything is needed (medicine, equipment to handle a sudden natural disaster) they can be dropped from orbit by an automatic lander.

Again, this assumes that habitable planets are plentiful (and that no one else wants that planet), transport cost is manageable and you have an ethnicity/minority that you cannot integrate, cause serious problems by their very nature to parent civilization (cryborgs, telepaths, etc) and have a cry for independence.

[Stormin]

In the Night's Dawn trilogy there are prison planets. It seemed the common method of using them was have families deported there until either 1 million prisoners have been set down or 100 years have passed. After that, bottle the place up for a couple centuries and then admit the planet into the confederacy.
Even criminals would need to form a proper government and the psychopaths would quickly be dealt with by the far larger number of people who just want to live the rest of their lives as well as they can. After the couple centuries are up the place has become a world that just needs some investment to bring the technology and industry back up to galactic standards.

[Rayo Azul]

What about the idea that the society doesn't want to take care/execute prisoners and therefore exiles them to a hellish planetary environment. If the local flora and animals kill them, they did at least have a chance, and hence no-one is to blame within the parent society. if they survive, generations later you have a super-resilient race or military stock.

There are a number of similes in various stories which use this to produce, either by accident or design, a super-soldier or race. Tom Godwin's Space Prison and the Dune novels spring to mind.

[Lord of the Abyss]

In the Night's Dawn trilogy there are prison planets. It seemed the common method of using them was have families deported there until either 1 million prisoners have been set down or 100 years have passed. After that, bottle the place up for a couple centuries and then admit the planet into the confederacy.
Even criminals would need to form a proper government and the psychopaths would quickly be dealt with by the far larger number of people who just want to live the rest of their lives as well as they can. After the couple centuries are up the place has become a world that just needs some investment to bring the technology and industry back up to galactic standards.

The problem I see with that is that realistically, the result would be a society whose founding ideals center around the confederacy being evil. Every time someone suffered or died because they didn't have access to "galactic standard technology and industry", they and everyone around them would know that it's only happening because the confederacy is punishing them for something their ancestors did. That would keep the hatred alive over the generations; the confederacy would be "those bastards who left us here to rot", a bogeyman and whipping boy for everything wrong with the world. How popular would England be with the Australians if they'd transported convicts there, then to this day they'd kept up a blockade on Australia?

Admitting planets full of people who hate your collective guts (and have good reason to, so the attitude won't go away) isn't going to do much good for your society's stability.

[sirocco]

In the Night's Dawn trilogy there are prison planets. It seemed the common method of using them was have families deported there until either 1 million prisoners have been set down or 100 years have passed. After that, bottle the place up for a couple centuries and then admit the planet into the confederacy.
Even criminals would need to form a proper government and the psychopaths would quickly be dealt with by the far larger number of people who just want to live the rest of their lives as well as they can. After the couple centuries are up the place has become a world that just needs some investment to bring the technology and industry back up to galactic standards.

The problem I see with that is that realistically, the result would be a society whose founding ideals center around the confederacy being evil. Every time someone suffered or died because they didn't have access to "galactic standard technology and industry", they and everyone around them would know that it's only happening because the confederacy is punishing them for something their ancestors did. That would keep the hatred alive over the generations; the confederacy would be "those bastards who left us here to rot", a bogeyman and whipping boy for everything wrong with the world. How popular would England be with the Australians if they'd transported convicts there, then to this day they'd kept up a blockade on Australia?

Admitting planets full of people who hate your collective guts (and have good reason to, so the attitude won't go away) isn't going to do much good for your society's stability.

The empire just need to be smart enough and bargain with the Natives for using their homeworld as a prison. If you follow the main idea in this thread which is having a mineral-poor planet, you could ship there the needed materials for what you would consider basic harmless technology and favor the most cooperative communities. They will essentially become the wardens of this new world and you would essentially have transformed this into a colony.

As to the satellites watching the planet, they could double as weather and communication satellites too. The best way to control people is to control every aspect of their lives.

[Enigma]

An idea I have for one of my stories is that instead of prison planets there would be a moon sized artificial construct designed to "digitize" (reduce a person to ones and zeroes) and download them into the construct. Inside the virtual world, the inmates would serve their sentences and their environment would be tailored to their crimes (i.e. those who committed crimes deserving of a "minimal security" setting would live in a quasi-boot camp while those in a "super-max" would live in a hell-world virtual environment).

The risks of dying in the virtual world are very real. Getting killed from a shanking while in the virtual prison would be permanent. There is no rebooting of the criminal.

There would be failsafes (attempting to hack the construct could cause it to digitize the hacker into the virtual hell-world, or a power surge feedback back to the hacker, etc...) and the construct is heavily armored and heavily armed should someone decide to hack in and free a comrade.

One could digitize in as many people into the construct as long as it has the HD capacity to hold it and still function. Of course, the virtual prison is mod-able so it could be upgraded whenever it is needed.

The idea I had of digitizing people wasn't from funny enough, Digimon but a late 80's - early 90's TV series about a battle in a post apocalyptic Earth between a rebel faction (led by some dude called Captain ?? [forgot the name]) against a fat cyborg emperor who tends to have people digitized. The emperor has robots that have a glowing center that was an obvious weak point for the rebels.

While the virtual world idea I got from Digimon.

[Lord of the Abyss]

In the Night's Dawn trilogy there are prison planets. It seemed the common method of using them was have families deported there until either 1 million prisoners have been set down or 100 years have passed. After that, bottle the place up for a couple centuries and then admit the planet into the confederacy.
Even criminals would need to form a proper government and the psychopaths would quickly be dealt with by the far larger number of people who just want to live the rest of their lives as well as they can. After the couple centuries are up the place has become a world that just needs some investment to bring the technology and industry back up to galactic standards.

The problem I see with that is that realistically, the result would be a society whose founding ideals center around the confederacy being evil. Every time someone suffered or died because they didn't have access to "galactic standard technology and industry", they and everyone around them would know that it's only happening because the confederacy is punishing them for something their ancestors did. That would keep the hatred alive over the generations; the confederacy would be "those bastards who left us here to rot", a bogeyman and whipping boy for everything wrong with the world. How popular would England be with the Australians if they'd transported convicts there, then to this day they'd kept up a blockade on Australia?

Admitting planets full of people who hate your collective guts (and have good reason to, so the attitude won't go away) isn't going to do much good for your society's stability.

The empire just need to be smart enough and bargain with the Natives for using their homeworld as a prison. If you follow the main idea in this thread which is having a mineral-poor planet, you could ship there the needed materials for what you would consider basic harmless technology and favor the most cooperative communities. They will essentially become the wardens of this new world and you would essentially have transformed this into a colony.

As to the satellites watching the planet, they could double as weather and communication satellites too. The best way to control people is to control every aspect of their lives.

All sorts of flaws with that line of argument. For one, there's no mention of "natives" to do any bargaining with. Second, the kind of constant contact you are talking about not only contradicts what Stormin was describing, but it would need to include a lot more than "basic harmless technology" in order to keep the "wardens" from being overrun and slaughtered as collaborators. It's guaranteed that the people stranded there are going to be very, very angry; you don't want to set yourself up as something they can take their rage out on. And weather & communication satellites aren't going to help "control" a local populace that can just ignore them and who won't trust them. "Controlling every aspect of their lives" sounds like pretty much the opposite of the "bottle them up and ignore them" scenario Stormin was talking about anyway.

[The Yosemite Bear]

it's more of a space opera thing when they start to recycle the age of wooden ships and iron men, planet Austrailia isn't far behind, just we'll clock the hostility of the wildlife up to 11, and make it a social darwinist experiment.

[someone_else]

A planet with restricted access would be far more cost-effective when you don't have to bother actually segregating prisoners into cells, monitoring their every move, isolating them from the rest of the population, etc

The main reason we bother separating prisoners in cells and looking at them is to keep them alive until the end of their jail period, since they still have some kind of human rights even if they are douchebag drug-dealers. If there is no surveillance whatsoever (other than the ships blockading the planet), then it makes no sense to bring them on another planet where they will kill each other anyway.
Building a proper prison will be necessary in any case.
And again, wasting a so huge amount of workforce seems stupid to me.

And no, you wouldn't put the dangerous prisoners who are flight risks there, this would be for petty offenses.

So, a poor hungry dumbass caught shoplifting will have to endure a month or so of violent barbarism on Prison Planet 15 while a rich mafia guy with strong friends will stay in a safe prison with medical staff and food at regular intervals? What kind of madness is that?

Operating one prison on an otherwise desolate planet is a huge waste. Operating a million prisons on one planet

Ok, but planets tend to be huge, there will be more than enough space for both your civilization and the prisons.
Even if you find some random way to decide that a significant quantity of your population is "unclean" and must be removed to preserve your "purity", remains more cost-effective to place the labor and killing camps in the middle of god-forsaken places that will abund on any planet.

[fgalkin]

Why would it devolve into barbarian-land? Humans are hierarchical creatures, and anarchy is generally not appreciated. At the scales we're talking about, you shouldn't be thinking "violent barbarism" as much as "a city you can't leave." It would certainly have its own government, a police force, competent medical facilities, etc, just like any other world. The only difference would be restricted communications with the outside world, and perhaps, having a separate economy based on "resource coupons" one receives for one's work, essentially providing the galaxy with a source of cheap manufactured goods. So, the punishment would be, essentially, "ten years of indentured labor at some factory," which may or may not be a good thing, but certainly more humane than the current prison system. And, of course, the companies would do their best to ensure order and productivity, so there would probably be less violence than in the current prison systems. Actual violent offenders would probably be more restricted, living under total and omnipresent electronic surveillance in segregated communities.

Have a very nice day.
-fgalkin

[sirocco]

All sorts of flaws with that line of argument. For one, there's no mention of "natives" to do any bargaining with. Second, the kind of constant contact you are talking about not only contradicts what Stormin was describing, but it would need to include a lot more than "basic harmless technology" in order to keep the "wardens" from being overrun and slaughtered as collaborators. It's guaranteed that the people stranded there are going to be very, very angry; you don't want to set yourself up as something they can take their rage out on. And weather & communication satellites aren't going to help "control" a local populace that can just ignore them and who won't trust them. "Controlling every aspect of their lives" sounds like pretty much the opposite of the "bottle them up and ignore them" scenario Stormin was talking about anyway.

What I meant by Natives are at least grandchildren of your first convicts i.e people who consider that planet as being their home.

It's true that they would blame and hate you for dumping new inmates whenever you feel like it. But as someone pointed it out before they are humans and therefore need to build a functional society. So they need too to keep in check the new guys and either integrate them or get rid of them as efficiently as possible. And you represent the best solution.

The satellites will help them check the neighbor settlements, the movement of the newcomers, communicate all over the planet, have enough statistics on weather to improve harvesting, etc. etc. And all the settlements with access to wireless communication will be using them.

On your part you just need to put them on automatic mode and check every now and then that they didn't get past rocket technology phase. Heck you could watch them from another planet.

Your evil empire may be their enemy but well they are very far away while the wilderness and the crazy guys running loose next to their home.