Editing Norfolk Island (section)

=== Second penal settlement (1824{{ndash}}1856) ===
[[File: Norfolk Island jail.jpg|thumb|right|Remains of Norfolk Island [[Prison|gaol]]]]
In 1824, the British government instructed the Governor of New South Wales, [[Thomas Brisbane]], to reoccupy Norfolk Island as a place to send "the worst description of convicts". Its remoteness, previously seen as a disadvantage, was now viewed as an asset for the detention of recalcitrant male prisoners. The convicts detained have long been assumed to be hardcore recidivists, or 'doubly-convicted capital respites' – that is, men transported to Australia who committed fresh crimes in the colony for which they were sentenced to death, but were spared the gallows on condition of life on Norfolk Island. However, a 2011 study, using a database of 6,458 Norfolk Island convicts, has demonstrated that the reality was somewhat different: More than half were detained on Norfolk Island without ever receiving a colonial conviction, and only 15% had been reprieved from a death sentence. Furthermore, the overwhelming majority of convicts sent to Norfolk Island had committed non-violent property offences, and the average length of detention there was three years.<ref>Causer, T. [http://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/1331354/ '"The Worst Types of Sub-Human Beings": the Myth and Reality of the Convicts of the Norfolk Island Penal Settlement] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120420035423/http://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/1331354/ |date=20 April 2012 }}, 1825–1855', ''Islands of History'', Sydney, 2011, pp.&nbsp;8–31.</ref> Nonetheless, Norfolk Island went through periods of unrest with convicts staging a number of [[Norfolk Island convict mutinies|uprisings and mutinies]] between 1826 and 1846, all of which failed.<ref>Cyriax, Oliver (1993). ''Crime: An Encyclopedia''. Andre Deutsch. 9780233988214, pp.&nbsp;284–285</ref> The British government began to wind down the second penal settlement after 1847, and the last convicts were removed to [[Tasmania]] in May 1855. The island was abandoned because transportation from the United Kingdom to [[Van Diemen's Land]] (Tasmania) had ceased in 1853, to be replaced by [[Penal labour|penal servitude]] in the UK.