wow

it never ceases to amaze me how ignorant americans are, even about their own country

Historically penal colonies have often been used for penal labour in an economically underdeveloped part of a state's (usually colonial) territories, and on a far larger scale than a prison farm. In practice such penal colonies may be little more than slave communities. The British, French, and other colonial empires heavily used North America and other parts of the world as penal colonies to varying degrees, sometimes under the guise of indentured servitude or similar arrangements.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penal_colony

The British used North America as a penal colony through a system of indentured servitude. Convicts would be transported by merchants and auctioned off to plantation owners upon arrival in the colonies. It is estimated that some 50,000 British convicts were sent to colonial America, representing perhaps one-quarter of all British emigrants during the 18th century.[1] The British also would often ship Irish and Scots to the Americas whenever there were rebellions in Ireland or Scotland, and they would be treated similar to the convicts, except that this also included women and children.