The Transportation Camp in Saint-Laurent-du-Maroni

In 1848, after a failed revolution and the abolition of slavery, French prisons were filling up with criminals and defeated rebels. The solution, at least according to Luis Napoleon Bonaparte: put them all to work in the French territories of New Caledonia and French Guiana.

The first boatload of prisoners landed on the beaches of the Salvation Islands in 1852, but facilities there filled up quickly. The Saint-Laurent du Maroni camp was commissioned and then completed on the mainland in 1858 and over the next century 70,000 prisoners ranging from vagrants to political prisoners were subjected to forced labor, “studied” by the prison doctors and executed by guillotine inside the prison walls.

Many journalists and relief societies denounced the horrific living conditions and in 1938 the order was finally given to shut it down. World War II, however, put a pause to the process and it wasn’t until 1953 that the prison was actually emptied and left to the jungle.