A friend remembers reading a science fiction book or series of books in the 1980s. Can you identify it? Details inside.
"Have you ever seen a book or a series of books from the 80's about a group a teen criminals from earth who are exiled on a prison planet? One of the boys might have been named Rand or Ran or Reed and carried a knife with a kriss blade. There may have been large cats on the planet and one of the kids may have befriended one? I think there was a picture of the cat creature among old ruins on the back cover. I have faint memories of reading a sci-fi book like that from my local library when I was a kid in the early 90s and I've been looking for it ever since."