Perhaps not everyone knows that 18 miles from Livorno, between the Tyrrhenian and Ligurian Seas, there is Gorgona, a small island unofficially known as the "Prison Island". For the few who know it, Gorgona Island is the location of an open-type correctional colony. This place could have been a paradise on earth, but for some reason, it has become an Alcatraz. It owes its second name to the correctional facility located here, where about 70 prisoners serve their sentence and about as many employees work.

Located just an hour's drive from Oslo, the island of Bastoy is a picturesque place that can only be reached by water transport. There are several beaches, tennis courts, and even a sauna. Instead of being behind bars, 115 inmates of this amazing prison live in comfortable wooden houses. What has never been on the island of Bastoy, though, is barbed wire and angry guards with guns and German shepherds. And this is despite the fact that the most hardened criminals of all kinds live there: from drug dealers and fraudsters to rapists and murderers.

Alcatraz, also known as "The Rock," is an island located in the San Francisco Bay. The island's territory was used as a fort, later as a military prison, and then as a highly secure prison for particularly dangerous criminals and those who attempted to escape from previous places of confinement.

Solovetsky camp of special purpose (SLON, "Solovki") was a place of exile both under the Russian Empire (this practice was introduced by Ivan the Terrible) and during the Soviet Union. The labor camp on the Solovetsky Islands has a very long and horrifying history. Here is the history of the largest corrective labor camp in the USSR, located on the territory of the Solovetsky archipelago, its famous prisoners, and the conditions of the detainees.

The "Ostrov Ognenny" (meaning Fire Island in Russian, also known as Vologda Pyatak, Pyatak stands for 5 kopeck coin) is a special regime zone for lifelong prisoners in Russia. It is located in the former Kirillo-Belozersky Monastery on Lake Novoye (Sweet Island), near the city of Belozersk, in the Belozersky District of the Vologda Oblast. The facility is operated by the Federal Penitentiary Service and is officially known as Correctional Colony No. 5.

Mont-Saint-Michel is a rocky island and fortress located on the northwest coast of France in the department of Manche, Normandy. The island is crowned by a majestic monastery with a soaring Gothic church built on top of a menacing granite rock. Surrounding the island are not waters, but sand dunes, and every day from the abbey's walls one can witness the transformation of the entire landscape with the ebb and flow of the tides. Prior to the French Revolution, political prisoners were primarily pamphleteers and Jansenists who were held in metal cages and dungeons within the abbey. With its dubious reputation as a place from which there is no escape, the prison at Mont Saint-Michel came to be known as the "Maritime Bastille."

The prison is located in South Africa, on Robben Island, off the coast of Cape Town. Once, seals used to live here, but then the island was settled, and for 400 years, it alternately housed a penal colony, a leper colony for the mentally ill, and a maximum-security state prison for political prisoners. It was here that the hero of the African liberation movement, Nelson Mandela, was held in chains, for which Robben Island received its gloomy notoriety in the world community.

Chateau d'If is a fortress located on the eponymous island and made famous by Dumas' work, located just a mile from Marseille and clearly visible from the city's waterfront. Since the end of the 16th century, the castle has been used to isolate and guard particularly dangerous criminals. It was from that time that the fortress received the name Chateau d'If. The dungeons held Huguenots, politicians, leaders of the Paris Commune, as well as individuals who posed a danger to France.

From 1852 to 1952, the island served as a prison for particularly dangerous criminals. The prison was created by the government of Emperor Napoleon III in 1852. It is one of the most infamous penal colonies in history. The forced labor camps were located on all three islands and on the coast of Kuru. Over time, they all became collectively known as "Devil's Island".

Norfolk Island was an English penal colony where the most dangerous criminals from England and Australia were sent. In 1814, the colony was abandoned as being too costly, but in 1825, the prison was re-established and used to house dangerous criminals - both criminal and political. Even for minor offenses, people were transported from England. For thirty years, Norfolk became a penal colony with a strict regime of imprisonment. The penal colony on the island was finally closed in 1854, but the prison buildings on the island are still carefully preserved and have become a popular tourist destination.

This remote Colombian island has a grim secret. It is a natural fortress surrounded by seas teeming with sharks, covered in impenetrable jungles, and crawling with deadly snakes. For this reason, the Colombian government chose it as the location for a maximum-security prison, its own Colombian Alcatraz.

St. Helena Island is located in Queensland, Australia, 21 km east of Brisbane and 4 km east of the mouth of the Brisbane River in Morton Bay. Originally used as a prison, it has now been turned into a national park. In the 19th century, St. Helena Island was a quarantine station which became one of the most profitable prisons in Queensland's history. The island was used to house prisoners and staff for 65 years. Many of those who participated in the 1891 Australian shearers' strike were imprisoned there alongside murderers and bushrangers.