With the creation of a truly global empire, the option to exile lawbreakers, rather than pay for their upkeep in prison, or take the objectionable step to execute them for non-capital crimes, became a viable alternative. The country of Australia started as a penal colony. What is the divine perspective of exile as an alternative to imprisonment and capital punishment?

This indeed is morally superior as an alternative to the slaughter of people for lawbreaking of a minor or moderate sort. The divine perspective about capital punishment is that it is never justified; it is always an immoral act that has severe karmic consequences for all involved leading to the death of another. In a sense, it is an equivalent crime taken at face value. Even though it seems to be morally justified, that is a distortion and a perversion of the substitution of the belief "might makes right" for a true divine perspective of the value of life and what one is truly doing from ending the life of another, and all that ensues karmically including a return of a backlash to those enforcing such laws and carrying out the deed of execution. There will be karmic penalties for all in the chain of events and that includes members of a society condoning such a legal sanction. So the idea of exile as a form of cleansing society of troublemakers and enforcing a physical separation in a way that is potentially less dire than incarceration in a minimal space, with minimal support for bodily needs, and perhaps no emotional and mental nourishment through a stultifying humdrum existence living in a cage—it is far better to provide a better environment at least. If a colony can be set up to contain such individuals where they may have a semblance of a life living among themselves but yet separate from society as a whole as a form of punishment, and ensuring safety through their containment, if it is done in a humane way, it can be a step up from using prisons with the stark minimalist rows of cells that are the tradition. Exile can also be simply an alternative form of dire punishment if the banishment is to an inhospitable environment such as one having extremes of inclement weather that constitute a form of torture if the prisoners are not given adequate protection, with adequate nutrition always being another point of vulnerability that can be abused by a harsh punitive government seeking retribution against the wrongdoers as the highest priority. Such was the motivation in the formation of the prison colony in Australia, but it did allow in the end an opportunity to have improved conditions overall, and again was a kind of experiment in exercising a higher perspective for the penal system as a whole. This again was divinely inspired to create possibilities for modifying the most draconian of punishment attendant to the legal system. There is still much room for improvement in the world of today.