Transportation was a way that many powerful European nations dealt with twin problems: Burgeoning offender populations (without the death penalty as a way to deal with most of them) and expanding...

Transportation was a way that many powerful European nations dealt with twin problems: Burgeoning offender populations (without the death penalty as a way to deal with most of them) and expanding geopolitical empires (that needed colonists). Could you see a way that transportation could reemerge in the twenty-first century (or in the near future)? Is this only a topic for science fiction?