Welcome to Jurassic Habitat

Prisoners as indentured servants warehoused in space would make an interesting movie, kind of the flip-side to Elysium. In Elysium, Earth is a hell-hole while the elite live in a space-borne paradise. In this new movie, Earth would be a paradise because all the dirty jobs, strip-mining, and icky people have been off-loaded into space.

It would make for an exciting movie, but I doubt that it would happen that way in real life. For one thing, what can indentured prisoners do that a free person or (increasingly) a machine can't do better?

I suppose that death row inmates could be sent into space to be publicly eaten by dinosaurs for the entertainment and intimidation of the masses. I don't endorse that, btw.