CONVICTS explores some of the issues surrounding the banishment of thousands of convict men, women and children to Australia. It provides discussion and documentation on many transportation-era topics such as convict labour and skills, prisoners' diets, the role of the British military in the penal settlement, the Female Factory system, the difficulties of forming and maintaining a family under the convict system and the bitter struggle to bring convict transportation to this sea-bound continent to an end. With an evocative new cover and including a foreword by the Hon Justice Michael Kirby AC CMG, this publication is among the first to explore the nation's criminal past on a national scale.