The prison battleship is a and a legal abomination . It confuses two mutually exclusive roles: the warship’s duty to destroy threats and the prison’s duty to preserve life until release. The only viable "prison battleship" is a museum ship converted into a correctional facility, permanently moored and disarmed.
In 1857, the British Royal Navy built the HMS Kutoubia, a wooden-hulled, screw-driven frigate. The ship was designed for transportation and colonial policing. After the Australian gold rushes of the 1850s, the demand for a dedicated prison transport vessel to handle the overflow of convicts grew. As a result, in 1867, the British Admiralty converted the HMS Kutoubia into a prison ship and transferred it to the Royal Australian Navy. prison battleship
These three-deckers, once the terror of the seas, were stripped of their masts, sails, and cannons. They were left to rot in the muddy estuaries of Portsmouth, Plymouth, and the Thames. To solve a domestic overcrowding crisis, the British government did the logical (if horrific) thing: they turned the carcasses of war machines into prisons. The prison battleship is a and a legal abomination