We all know that a large number of the convicts sent to Australia back in the day were convicted of "stealing a crust of bread to feed my little sister" type crimes but today I learned that a lot of them were sent for stealing their workhouse uniforms. By which I mean they were from Victorian workhouses, which were desperate, exploitative and abusive places on purpose (to encourage people to stop being poor), they decided to take that encouragement and try to make it on their own, left (which they were allowed to do)... and were arrested, imprisoned and eventually sent as convict labour to Australia because they were wearing the uniform they were given when they entered the workhouse (their own stuff was usually all confiscated when they arrived and workhouses didn't pay wages at this time so there was no way for them to get any other clothes). Imagine quitting your job at a fast food restaurant and then you get sent to a distant colony to die tilling fields for the military because you wore your stupid little uniform hat home.
Humanity fucking loves having a prison industrial complex so much. We can just never stop doing it.
It's so obvious that it was 100% case of creating laws specifically to increase the number of criminals so the folks in power could do whatever they wanted with them...
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And there were several reasons for it
Remove undesirable people from a area (poor, Irish, non-white, children) - sometimes just to decrease population in general, sometimes with the view to take their land/property (export all the Irish folks in Ireland -> Free Real Estate!)
Free/cheap labor in a place where labor is needed and it's hard to get people to go by choice. Make that sweet sweet money without having to do invest in something so petty as wages
Increase population to hold onto colony. They may be undesirable in England but at least they aren't Those People (Indigenous Australians). You can even force them to fight and do genocide for you. And if you can convince them that if they just do everything right, they might one day be counted as a real person, they might even do it willingly (see also: indentured people in North America - "earn your freedom by capturing enslaved people, we promise this is the natural order of things)
And since they're expendable anyway, you don't have to worry too much about food, clothing, housing, medical care. If they become unable to work or die, they're easily replaced. If you keep changing the laws you can get more criminals!
Yep, there's a preserved ex-workhouse in my county that's a regular for schools trips. There's a room where the workhouse residents would be sent to to tie oakum fibres into ships ropes, something usually reserved as prison punishment and often injured hands/wrists to the point of being unable to work (and being kicked out) or killed the people through lung problems. They got a tiny wage (too small to use to get back out into normal work) and the workhouse would get the profit from selling the rope. There's also a mass grave outside which was mosty poor women and children who died inside the workhouse. This is only in rural England, I can't imagine how much worse it was in other parts of the empire like Ireland or Australia
