Is there any precedent for sending criminals serving life terms to the front lines?
Both the Russians and the Germans made heavy use of penal battalions in World War II, usually followed by SS or NKVD battalions with large machine-guns to ‘encourage’ them to fight hard. I think any country attempting to use penal battalions now will face a legal minefield from friends and relatives, and also have to find a non-lethal way to encourage compliance on the frontlines.
Well I was actually wondering where the USA has ever used criminals. Seems like a good deal from a couple standpoints even if it does pose some logistical problems.
As for the pros, instead of rotting in a jailcell watching reruns of cops, they could have a chance of dying with honor, perhaps even winning their freedom.
We could put them in impossible situations where escape is extremely unlikely such as air dropping them into the middle of Kabul give them big guns and tell them to have some fun and never set foot in the USA again. Or maybe drop them into a heavily fortified training camp so they can soften defenses for a military assault.
Of course the obvious cons would be, whos to say they won’t turn tail and run or start killing innocent civilians. Also, I’m sure there are legal difficulties in sending people to their certain death.
I don’t know…any comments?
This topic is a moral and legal morass, but I’ll point out one practical issue:
People who commit sufficiently heinous crimes that you want to sentence them to suicide missions have already demonstrated that they are defective. They are, to make a broad generalization, sociopaths. I doubt there’s any evidence to suggest that they would suddenly have a burst of patriotic enthusiasm and fight the good fight. More likely, they’d just bolt or end up helping the enemy.
If you’re interested in using prisoners to bolster the military, I think a more workable system would be to return to the old days when a judge would give a delinquent youth a choice between detention or enlistment. This still puts criminals in the ranks, but only people guilty of fairly mild infractions who are deemed open to the rehabilitation of military training. Even this conflicts with the “professional” nature of the modern soldier.
Right! Just what you need. In an armed force you constantly struggle to instill the military virtues of loyalty, courage, comradely, endurance in the face of danger and discomfort and discipline. All you need is to inject into that a bunch of people who are so lacking in those very qualities that civil society has found it necessary to set them aside in a safe place. How would you like to lead and be responsible for an outfit made up of convicts?
Incidently, zealots don’t make very good soldiers either.
Well the lead part is easy, just give them guns and drop them in a no-win situation. Its the whole responsibility part that gets you. No telling what a couple individuals without morals could do.
Well the lead part is easy, just give them guns and drop them in a no-win situation. Its the whole responsibility part that gets you. No telling what a couple individuals without morals could do. Of course we could always disavow knowledge.
But I guess the basic answer to the original question is no, the US has never used criminals as soldiers?
THE DIRTY DOZEN claimed to be based on a true story. And we all know Hollywood would never lie to us.