To help develop the colony, the French government decided to build penal colonies on French Guiana in the mid-19th Century. Convicts would serve their time in prison, then be sent here to live for a time equal to their original sentences. This was done with the dual purposes of castigation and to help increase the population. This strategy was thwarted, however, when the majority of prisoners died of tropical diseases while on the island. The last penal colony closed in the 1950?s.

French Guiana is trying to transform itself into a popular tourist destination. The French have even tried to expunge the name Devil's Island from its maps, choosing instead to group the island with two of its neighbors, Ile Royale and Ile St. Joseph, under the name Iles du Salut, or Islands of Salvation. Today, Devil's Island is used for tracking shuttles as they ascend from the Kourou Space Center, which has launched the majority of all European satellites now in orbit. But, for as much as they try to ignore their ignoble past, the three islands continue to achieve most of their notoriety from their penal colony past.

Devil's Island is the most notorious of the three. The penal colony here housed falsely accused French spy Alfred Dreyfuss, and was the setting for Henri Charriere's novel, Papillon, which was later made into a film starring Dustin Hoffman and Steve McQueen.