Norfolk Island has lain abandoned from February 15, 1814 to June 6, 1825.

In 1824, however, the British government had instructed the Governor of New South Wales, Thomas Brisbane, to occupy Norfolk Island as a place to send “the worst description of convicts”.

Its remoteness, previously seen as a disadvantage, is now viewed as an asset for the detention of recalcitrant male prisoners.

The convicts detained have long been assumed be a hardcore of recidivists, or 'doubly-convicted capital respites'—that is, men transported to Australia who have committed fresh colonial crimes for which they have been sentenced to death, and are spared the gallows on condition of life at Norfolk Island.

However, a recent study has demonstrated, utilizing a database of six thousand four hundred and fifty-eight Norfolk Island convicts, that the reality was somewhat different: more than half were detained at Norfolk Island without ever receiving a colonial conviction, and only fifteen percent had been reprieved from a death sentence.

Furthermore, the overwhelming majority of convicts sent to Norfolk Island had committed nonviolent property sentences, the average length of detention was three years, and the scale of punishments inflicted upon the prisoners was significantly less than assumed.