Yes, it's a good question.
“Penal” means “punitive”, and “colonialism” would be the history of European exploitation in other people's countries, like in Canada, New Zealand, and Australia. It's a settler colonial region where individuals came, settled, and had to eliminate the existing systems, governance, and cultures in order to settle. That would be a colonial-penal logic. They parallel each other through assimilation, reformation, and rehabilitation.