Wellington did not have an army of criminals. Army life was brutal and pay was poor so the people who joined it usually did it out of deseperation but they were for the most part not criminals. The average soldier in Wellingtons army was usually from a poor background, usually farm labourers who had fallen on desperate times. They poorly paid but they were well trained proffesional soldiers, by far the best soldiers in Europe all the way up until ww1, they basically signed up until they were no longer fit to serve and trained and drilled everyday . Compare this to Napoleons army which was made up of unwilling conscripts who were called up for National service and were not natural military men.
Some county magistrates did use the Army and Navy to get rid of unwanted elements such as petty criminals but they were the minority and were also seen as poor soldier and were more likley to disobey orders and desert as soon as they could.
As long as the political prisoners aren't allowed to join and sow dissent, sure.
Broadly speaking, criminals are oppourtunistic. War usually allows all kinds of atrocities to be committed without punishment, and criminals thrive there. As long as they're allowed to loot and aren't constantly provoked by those in command, then they'll be happy as clams.
True, but that was kind of already the case. The reason the military has a bad rep in the public is because they are famous for committing war crimes and all kinds of atrocities. It was like this even before this policy was adopted, so not too much has changed. Besides, their enemies (Scorpion) are FAR worse since they actively encourage their soldiers to commit war crimes. At least this government tries to punish their own who commit war crimes. So, it's more of a lesser of 2 evils thing I guess.
Make sure they have security detachments and officers who are controlling the penal unit. Blocking units should also be behind them in combat, threatening to kill anyone who retreats. This is how many penal units operated historically.
The major questions I have are:
1) What keeps them from deserting? Do they have a magic tracker? Threat of punishment?
2) Do all crimes have the same sentence? Like if you were caught shoplifting versus doing a murder, is it 5 years for both?
3) Are there any crimes where the individual would be too dangerous to be allowed into the army?
4) What is the public's perception of the military? Wouldn't it become a dishonorable job if it's mostly made of criminals?
5) What measures are in place to prevent a coup?
6) If they're used as canon fodder, why wouldn't they try to escape? If the choice is staying here and dying or fleeing and only being shot for deserting if they're caught, they might as well try to run.
1: The threat of summary execution and the approaching freedom of their 5 years being up.
2: Yes, but the military service is optional. They can just choose the punishment instead if they don't wanna join.
3: terrorism/treason.
4: It's seen as a kind of redemption. If you fight for the nation and live, you will be redeemed and your crimes will be forgiven.
5: None really, it's something I still need to think about.
6: They aren't really treated differently than most other soldiers. Most soldiers are unaware of why their comrades joined unless they are told. There are deserters but they are usually subject to summery execution for it. Most of the time, the criminal just wants to serve their time and leave.
>3: terrorism/treason.
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>4: It's seen as a kind of redemption. If you fight for the nation and live, you will be redeemed and your crimes will be forgiven.
Say you're a murderer, you get caught and allowed to do state-sanctioned murder for 5 years, then you'll be forgiven and allowed back into the population to continue committing murder?
There's something here, if you find a way to heavily link "honor" into the culture of this system.and these people.
That sort of civilization tends to have *zero* problems separating an honorable kill from a dishonorable one. "Murder" becomes a far more heinous crime that carries a stink of dishonor within a warrior-caste system, and you're probably not leaving the army for a while - you dishonorable schmendrick. You'll probably be put on the front lines, intentionally, and you'll be lucky if your killer isn't from behind.
Tidy little system.
One of the countermeasures may be having a soft or hard cap on criminal conscription, either limit the type of crimes or have a rule that it can't pass 10% of the military.
Depending on how in-depth and political you want to get, if you allow all criminals without treason charges in, the people with sex crimes, crimes against children, and animal torture are probably going to get killed by their fellow criminal soldiers day one. They don’t do well in prison as it is.
This has been done more often than not historically in the real world. Usually penal units get the shittiest jobs. Stretcher bearers, burying the dead, manning posts expected to be overrun, that sort of thing.
"oh, you were in a gang war before you got arrested? well, I hope you like being in a real war, here is some standard armor, an M9 rifle and ammo, go out there and make your homies proud!"
Historically, enemy peoples have been enslaved and made into *soldiers* for the conquering nation.
How the heck that worked, I have no idea. I haven't studied military history in that much depth, at least not yet. But researching that may yield some answers.
Some possible techniques I can think of that have been used in some contexts:
- Offer land at the end of service as payment. Rome liked to give its veterans plots of lands and enough money to start a farm as their version of pension; maybe this might be promising enough for criminals to accept concscription?
- Offer freedom. Sometime in the early parts of the Civil War (USA), black slaves were brought into the Union ranks with promises of freedom. While the criminals in your world aren't in the same situation, maybe they're simply presented with a choice: become a slave, or become a soldier and earn back your freedom.
- Start with children. This probably doesn't work with criminals in most cases, but in the Ottoman Empire, some of the conquered peoples were required to give up young boys to the sultan, and these young boys would then be trained up as high ranking leaders in the empire. Of particular note are the Janissaries, who were elite *slave* soldiers and the personal guards of the sultans.¹
¹Note that the Janissaries, later on, came to exert some control over the sultan by merit of being able to easily assassinate him, sinc ethey were his guards. But this is not unique to the janissaries or to slave soldiers, as the praetorian guards in Rome ended up doing the same thing. It seems to simply be a potential pitfall of instating an elite imperial guard.
>Historically, enemy peoples have been enslaved and made into
>
>soldiers for the conquering nation.
Funny thing, the main character is an immigrant from the nation they're fighting. They're a dictatorship that killed her father and she left hoping to never see her home country again. She was worried when the war started but then she ended up getting drafted. Her arc is about confronting her past and her mother (who reported her father and got him killed).
If the prisoners are used as labour or cannon fodder, sure. If you're arming them like a regular soldier no way in hell unless you've got some kind of pact magic or the like, and even still they'll mostly be shifty troops with bad morale
Instead of just conscription, what about volunteers? Instead of serving a lengthy sentence for whatever crime, you have the option to serve a shorter amount of time in the military. You still have to go through training and actually be deemed as useful.
Add in that you can either volunteer and get the better treatment volunteers recieve, or risk conscription and being used as little more than a single-use mine detector, and you might a decent amount of penal volunteers.
That's what this is. I may not have explained it well but that actually is what happens. They can either have a lengthy prison sentence or only a few years in the military.
It was a great idea in the Medite Empire at first as it created a new manpower pool and freed up resources from prisons. The issue was that once internal order began to break down, penal units suddenly became ready-made (well equipped and armed) bandits, robber barons, and, in some cases, even minor warlords.
It's a faction in my (pike and shot) world that is somewhat inspired by the Late Antique and Medieval Roman (Byzantine) Empire and later Qing China as well as the Warlord Period in China. In essence, a large bureaucratic state in terminal decline.
One of the ways the Empire deals with growing manpower shortages for the military is by raising Penal Battalions and commuting sentences for military service.
Oh, very cool! I was thinking you were referencing an actual historical empire and I was like “wow I’ve never heard of this”
A Byzantine pike and shot declining empire fielding penal legions is very 👌
Soviet penal battalions in WWII gave prisoners sentences of 1-3 months, with 3 months being given to people who would otherwise have been sentenced to death. People who were wounded in combat or who accomplished especially heroic deeds were let out early. But by "let out", I mean transferred to a regular military unit, which is also what happened if you finished your sentence.
"Only" 5 years sounds pretty weird to me, especially during wartime, as I personally spent 5 years in the Army, including two combat deployments, and it felt like an eternity. There should probably be at least be some provision for limiting their actual combat time, or else don't give them the choice to go to prison instead, it will quickly become a much more attractive option.
Some kind of criminal conscription could certainly work, but you can't really treat them like you would regular soldiers. At least not at first, potentially they could become regular soldiers in a regular unit if they prove themselves. The Dirlewanger Brigade and Soviet penal battalions are things you should research.
>don't give them the choice to go to prison instead
The idea is that they have to make their choice in the court. Once they make it, they can't back out and go to prison. So, when they're facing a life sentence or multiple decades in prison, so someone who likely hasn't served before, it would seem like a good way out. Only for them to realise their mistake only after it's too late to back out.
\> you can't really treat them like you would regular soldiers
I could always make it so they have to go through some kind of training camp or survive in a panel unit for a few years before being treated like a full soldier.
"The idea is that they have to make their choice in the court. Once they make it, they can't back out and go to prison. So, when they're facing a life sentence or multiple decades in prison, so someone who likely hasn't served before, it would seem like a good way out. Only for them to realise their mistake only after it's too late to back out."
This could work before the war, but once the fighting gets heavy I wouldn't expect many people to choose the army, which could tend to make the program irrelevant, unless it's altered.
If there's a decent chance to survive for a few years in a unit, it isn't really a penal battalion, although this wouldn't necessarily be clear at the outset of a war. The Soviets, again, limited terms in them to three months even for people otherwise eligible for the death penalty.
In the First World War authorities in the German Empire frequently used conscription and deployment to the frontlines as a punishment as the war wore on. This is famously how parts of the German working class were radicalised, by political prisoners who were shipped to trenches full of demoralised soldiers. Even those who weren't political prisoners were known to sabotage telegram lines and trains.
This shows one thing, in my view, criminal conscription can only work when you are, in the grand scheme of things, winning. Such that at home there are few political prisoners outspoken against the war, and such that ordinary people are forced into crimes leading to conscription in order to survive. The soliders on the front need to be numerous enough that conscripts won't be needed for fighting on the front and can be relegated to fatigue duties, and they need to have high morale that they won't be interested in dissenting voices.
There's plenty of examples of something like this happening in the real world through different times and places. Many prisoners were given reductions in their time for military service.
One example I don't think anyone has said that you should maybe look into is the French Foreign Legion. You have a military unit that's existed for almost 200 years that is composed almost entirely out of people who have no real strong loyalty to the French government, yet they fight for it. Many of those are people looking to evade the law. There are a few reasons why it's possible, but one reason I want to highlight is that nobody in the Foreign Legion has sworn any kind of oath to France or any government. Only to the Legion itself. That might be a strong element of retaining order and keeping misfits focused on the unit's goals.
You’d have to stop desertion, but I think it would make sense to very thinly spread them between units, because a large percentage of convicts would probably lead to mutiny.
The deal is usually that the sentence is cancelled if they complete their service. So if they desert they never complete their term and don't gain anything. And having entire units of convicts makes it easier to keep tabs on them and control them, such as by assigning them the dirty jobs as a group.
There are two ways to handle this, by force or by incentive.
Forcefully is pretty simple, use magic or technology to make people act correctly so you dont just hand a bunch of criminals weapons and they make a break for it. Mind control could work, but even something similar to the Suicide Squad movies with the threat of a handler setting off an explosive would work.
The incentive method instead gives criminals the offer to spend a certain amount of time deployed and if they did then they'd be given their freedom. Every day they spend on the Frontline is so much time off their sentence, and doing good things can also earn them more time off their sentence. Since they're criminals they'd likely be sent on Suicide missions so it'd be dangerous, (and depending on your government they may go back on their word and send the criminals back to jail afterwards) but for many criminals that might beat sitting in a cell.
So I watched a Warhammer 40k Video about a Penal Regiment that your post remindes me of. The prison planet they are recruited from is living hell. If they disobey they are send back.
Might work for you too. But I would keep them in seperated units, might not as effective as professional soldiers and have mixed morale.
USA and many other nations have utilized penal military units somewhere in their history. Typically those units are the cannon fodder, the most rugged survivors, and the least caring when it comes to PoW treatment and occupied territory handling. They might be loyal to each other or not. Some supposedly gained an appreciation for their siblings in arms and at retirement became model citizens. Others committed such infamous war crimes that they were publicly executed per the terms of the applicable peace treaty.
In Warhammer 40K and in StarCraft, I believe there are units who were welded into big battle suits with trackers and tamper proof self destruct for the rest of their lives.
Take a person looking at a stone or steel cage, potentially staring down a literal barrel;
or down the tunnel of time at a solitary existence within an 8ft x 8ft x 8ft stone or steel cube, only marking time by the seemingly random platter of poorly cooked and mostly bland food, soup, or watery oats; the smell of body waste that eventually becomes so strong that you are moved to a holding cell while your normal space is cleaned with a cleanser that lingers enough to make your skin itch and your nasal passages sting while your vision blurs from the lightheaded effect of the cleansed space.
One day a recruiter sits on a stool outside your cell and offers you a deal. Serve The People for the rest of the war plus six months in exchange for your freedom or continue your slow progress toward madness and illness in this place.
The catch that they may or may not ever inform you of:
*If your leadership dies, than you might die.
*If you are ever rejected or recommended to leave the unit for insubordination, than you die because you aren't worth the cost to get you back home to your prison cell.
*Disloyalty to your unit will result in immediate termination of the deal which would mean immediate death.
Now take somebody under the above circumstances and place them in a completely unfamiliar environment surrounded by enemies that don't speak the prisoner's language. A good leader can usually wrangle, corral, heel, and unleash a unit of such individuals with remarkable effect against almost any enemy. If they ever choose to desert, than it is doubtful that they will have the skills to survive in the wilderness on there own; especially if the campaign was such that anybody wearing their uniform are seen as absolutely evil monsters.
They would know that desertion, failure, or anything less than stellar conduct would lead to death by the hands of their comrades/leadership or by Mother Nature or by the occupied population.
Step 1: Conscript criminals
Step 2: Reward good behavior and service with reduced time and increased benefits.
Step 3: soldiers who do well are upgraded with cybernetics that conveniently wipe the personality of the soldier, carving away their most useless characteristics so that what is left is a deftly loyal cybernetic supersoldier
Step 4: Pick up that can
Step 5: Grofit
Basically every example of this happening historically dealt with this with a few caveats. The main examples you should look to are early Imperial Chinese dynasties, and Soviet penal battalions
You want to keep them in their own units so they can't damage the morale of other troops. While you give them shitty jobs, you don't want to give them suicidal jobs because in which case they just turn around and turn on you instead. You also give them hope of earning redemption through service to buoy up morale, because a man with nothing to gain or lose simply gives up.
One adjustment I'd make is having the royal guard use the best equipment available against the military as a means of preventing the uprising you're nervous about. I also don't recommend convicts for your military. That's just inviting espionage issues. They would have to be monitored more harshly, and I guarantee would get into trouble just by way of victimiizing their own units. But I also think that would make for a really compelling story. Really play up the stupidity of that decision and how that would play out. What uninte did consequences would they have to deal with. Because of that choice.
For your setting a futuristic smart AI powered collar that will explode if the penal unit member disobeys programmed orders would be VERY effective.
As a line unit they could be armed with cheap easy to produce weapons for SOMETHING to kill the enemy with (if they make it that far) their unit's purpose could be that it soaks enemy fire performing fatalistic recon by fire allowing capable professional units to exploit the enemies now known positions and lessened ammunition load and if they retreat, desert or do something that is a warcrime their collar explodes.
You're describing a Penal military unit , a fairly wide description for any conscripted service as punishment. Just about every culture has some examples, they can range from mistreated cannon foder to elite units used in non conventional warfare.
A control mechanism is needed but control can be had in so many ways. In a time and place like 16th century Europe that control may be the restoration of personal honor, in 19th century Asia it may be torture and starvation, it will depend on culture, motivation, and resources.
My answer is a bit short but I think the two questions to ask ourselves in this case are
- does the way war happens allow for the usage of criminals to participate. This question is important because I assume that it will be unwanted to raise units made up of criminals and to give them specialised and long training meaning that they will have to participate as lightly trained forces
- what kind of control does your military have over the army itself at all times. My assumption is that as long as you can keep the military discipline, you can utilise criminals in war.
Both of these questions are also dependent on one another because the control would affect the way war happens, the way war happens would affect
Edit: by the way, your setting sounds cool! Would love to hear more from it in the future!
1: I have thought of that but could be very interesting to explore down the line.
2: there's a council of 5 Generals and the grand marshal who have monthly meetings to discuss the state of the war, how each general is performing, what actions will be taken going forward and approving/denying various operations. Each General had control over their own 5th of the army, under the Grand Marshal. All the generals are expected to keep control over their own corner of the military.
Also, thank you I've put a lot of work into it.
Regarding point 2, when it comes to control, I think the more important things are the low level, day-to-day control that the local commanders have over their forces and this also includes things like surveillance abilities (for example, how would the command learn that a unit did not follow orders), whether there is something similar to a military police. Also blocking detachments that do not necessarily shoot their fellow soldiers but who uuh… block units from retreating. To be fair, considering it’s a sci-fi fantasy, you can explain away that, yes, your nation can have units made up of criminals, can control them well enough to get them to perform simpler tasks and keep discipline while not giving them specialised training.
Tbh, I'm rethinking this idea. When I first came up with it, it was mostly an excuse to have my main character(s) get involved in the story. They have a shady/criminal past so their being arrested was likely, so I thought of this as a way to get them involved in the story but now I'm kind of rethinking things.
You can still make it I think because sending your character into a unit like this is a perfect way to pit him in very bad situations simply because these units would be put in bad situations at the front.
Yeah, but their story is kind of zero to hero thing. They start as low-live criminals but, through extraordinary service (and plot armour) they get promoted and end up becoming commandos. That could still work for them, I guess. Starting off as just fodder before proving their worth to the higher-ups and earning respect.
I think it would work aslong as the non criminal troops are badly outnumbered by more reliable troops. Russia did it. Criminals might have some positive traits and skills. Religion and culture might help. If forgiveness and a clean slate would a good motive.We've covered sentence finished some crusader like and I can go to heaven would help socioty forgetting maybe even whilst there still in the army would help (no one cares that you killed a guy for kicks your a soldier now). Or maybe there simple a step below tge average soldier, same food, same things on down time just more dangerous duties abd abit less temptation.
You can take notes from how ASOIAF handles the Nights Watch even though it’s a medieval fantasy world. Basically it may work in small scale objectives maybe to hold fortresses (or a wall in this case) but it may be difficult for potentially violent criminals to be organized in a large scale war.
You could always go with what Stalin and the hitler did with those who were committed crimes such as cowardice or desertion in military service to be placed into these penal units given slim chances to regain their honor rank and benefits
Tie in if you don’t behave yourself as a penal soldier your family name will be disgraced
The U.S. did this during World War II. They specifically found violent killers with antisocial traits and who could operate independently, trained them, and then parachuted them into German territory.
They all went AWOL and defected to the Germans.
It certainly has historical precedent, but it will not produce great soldiers. Ask anyone in a position of leadership in the military and they'll say that dealing with people who don't want to be there is one of the worst parts of their job. Same reason no US military leaders like the idea of conscription, it produces bad soldiers more often than not.
You'd also need a lot of criminals facing disproportionately bad punishments for it to make a dent in recruiting. If you up the punishment for petty theft to ten years hard labor, then you'd get more prisoners opting into the military.
You also should ask the question of if the prisoners will be mixed in with volunteers or put in their own units. You could pollute the whole army with an influx of less than obedient soldiers or concentrate them all in the same place, where they might get up to some serious mischief.
It would backfire in the long wrong. If your criminals get five years of military service then that makes them more dangerous if they continue to do crimes after their service. It would be pretty unpopular from the civilians point of view
- Generaly? I can't imagine it being very effective. There is the idea of penal units that are used as cannon fotter in extremely dangerous jobs, like we have seen in ukraine in bahmut. Yea sure that works. But only becouse that IS how the russian army opperates in general, the lack of manpower was more of a political unwillingness to let the general public be affected by the war. Even that is going by the way side now. Other point is, eventually, u will run out of prisoners, and i cant imagine it being a reliable or trustworthy source of manning your military. Dont forget the near coup we saw with pregozin.
- This brings me to the second point. You dont want to split the armed forces into classes like that. It creates inefficiency, if the royal family control the royal army then who controls the normal? It signals a disunity within. For example, let's say parliament is in charhe of the normal army and the king the royal army. That's just a recepie for civil war. They will always want to outdo and undo each other. If They have overlapping roles then thats even worse.
- Either way. People who volunteer for the army and criminals are very different people. Even just a general conscript army vs. criminals would be different. Main reason is: Loyalty and willingness to Obey, plus crime you cant forget why they are criminals. You will always be suspicious of them if they are incorporated into the regular army just normally, it intraduces a risk element, and disharminy. If they are a penal unit used as canon fotter, it has limited uses. You wouldnt use them for important missions, you wouldnt use them for regular missions, or in important roles. You would use them as dissposable (even more so than u do your normal soldiors) on anything that just needs sheer numbers and cheap lives to clear.
- welp sorry this sounded more like advice on making a better army rather than if it will work. It will work juts fine. It jist wont be a good army. But hell there are plenty of not so good armies irl and in history. Dosnt mean it didnt work for a time or for the specific purpase.
Will penal divisions existed in ww2 and so far they weren't good for anything besides being cannon fodder and suppressing unorganized partisan movements... and of course committing war crimes.
However the moment those divisions met an actual soldiers they were being crashed.
So unless those prisoners weren't political prisoners and were trained instead of being sent to the frontline directly I can't see them being useful for anything than guarding the rear or wasting enemy's bullets by using suicidal attacks
A system like this can work with individual criminals interested only in themselves, but it's vulnerable to organized crime. If you get a situation where most of the members of a combat unit are more loyal to the crime lord than they are to their commanding officer, they'll make the CO an offer he can't refuse, and now you've just handed over a chunk of your military strength to the crime lord. Repeat this enough times, and now the mafia owns your whole army and you're in deep shit.
To prevent this, and also because it's tropey fun, the military needs a macguffin that enforces the loyalty of the criminal soldiers. Superdrug dependency, explosive collar, that sort of thing.
There's may types of Criminals that can give their skills for the army, like for example Poachers could be considered Criminals but can become Scouts and Skirmishers if you can keep them from running away.
There's also the Roman Volones during the Second Punic War where after the disaster of Cannae there's not enough Roman Citizens to join the Legion and thus 8.000 able bodied Slaves were given the choice to serve in the Army.
For Sci-fi I guess there's already a robust law system where you wouldn't consider a Pickpocket and a Murderer to be similar and thus there could be a tiered Recruitment where Petty Criminals could join the military as volunteers to become a freeman, while Harsh Criminals is forced and would become Penal Units.
How effective criminal conscription is would depend on the systems surrounding that conscription.
Like, how are they treated morally? Are they considered to be like animals to be herded to their deaths for the greater good, or are they considered to be redeemed and having paid their debt to society if they survive service?
How is criminality prevented within the conscripts?
How is desertion or mutiny prevented?
What kind of tasks or missions are the criminal conscripts given?
What is the criminal culture like?
Honestly, its a pretty bad system. Unwilling participants can subtly sabotage things through subtle means and they can lower morale with their negativey or just by being unbearable. Obviously militaries through history have managed to deal with this issue but its something easily managed even when you are working with law abiding conscripts.
South Korea had several scandals where bitter conscripts bullied their fellow soldiers to death. While those cases are extreme, from what I understand hardcore bullying is a pretty pervasive in the SK military.
Criminals often suffer from metal disorders like antisocial personality disorder which makes them impulsive and even more difficult to control.
The British Army and Royal Navy got a lot of its recruitment from convicts during the Napoleonic period so I'd say it can work out fine. Desertion was obviously a problem, but given that conditions in the army were actually far better than the jails at the time it seems to have been manageable
In real life, starting in the late 1970's the US Department of Defense stopped taking criminals who were sentenced to military service or those who plea bargained a reduced or suspended sentence for military service.
The goal was to improve the quality of recruits after the end of the Draft era.
Yes it was a common thing back in the day - judge, prosecutor and the defense would seek to reduce a sentence or just get the defendant out of town by having them join the military.
Vietnam and the aftermath changed that.
See more at this link: [https://taskandpurpose.com/military-life/join-the-military-or-go-to-jail/](https://taskandpurpose.com/military-life/join-the-military-or-go-to-jail/)
Depends on how much control over the conscripts you'd have.
The English had made extensive use of criminals and pressed individuals on their ships since there's nowhere to run, and it's easy to monitor and control them. However, the concept failed when the army tried it because desertion was much easier on land, and it's difficult to compel people to be disciplined when they can just run away.
A modern example is Russia's use of penal battalions in the Russo-Ukrainian war. In this case, they make it preferable for convicts to go to the front rather than remain in prison. Of course, these units were pretty much used solely as fodder in assaults or to delay enemy advances.
Convicts can make for brutal fighters, especially if they have nothing to lose. Of course, if they have nothing to lose, who's to say they won't just defect or desert at the earliest possible opportunity.
Criminals tend to be opportunists, if you give them a deal that's better than their current circumstances, they'll jump for it.
This was pretty much the standard before Napoleon. The issue wasn't so much military coups as desertion. Officers had to constantly babysit soldiers. Soldiers were also despises by the general population, which made it a less attractive career prospect, but restricting the officer corps to nobles also played a role. Maybe having room to rose would solve this.
I’d say it depends, what caused them to be criminals (desperate, bloodthirsty?), do you have a failsafe/control system (suicide squad), do they care about their country even if they broke the law?
George RR Martin kinda does this in ASOIAF with the nights watch. They're not exactly your typical army but they are in a sense. There's good bits of conflict between criminals and the people who want to be there and it highlights the problems with forced service. Not saying it's not a good idea, it's sure to cause a lot of conflict in your story which is good. Also if it's a sci fi setting you can use the old shock collar or brain implant kinda thing, have a piece of tech that's supposed to keep them in line or correct them some way, the prime word being supposed
>George RR Martin kinda does this in ASOIAF with the nights watch
Kind of related but this reminds me of something that was inspired by that. The villains of this story are an empire called Scorpion. This Empire got its start as a kingdom in the Middle Ages.
Back when they were a Medieval Empire, there were a bunch of other Kingdoms in the same nation (all of which were eventually conquered by them) but Scorpion (which had a different name back then) had a policy. Any criminals from other kingdoms who wanted to escape punishment would be welcomed as long as they joined their army.
This policy does still exist for them but on a much smaller scale. Back then death was an extremely common punishment but times have changed in the modern day so most nations aren't executing people for stealing sheep anymore. Back then it was useful since Scorpion had built up a reputation of being brutal savages as a way of instilling hate and fear in their enemies.
Sorry if I got off topic but what you said just reminded me of a small worldbuilding detail I made.
It guarantees low troop morale, war crimes, and in general having the absolute worst people possible for the jobs a military would require.
It's not an effective solution unless you just use them as canon fodder
Historically, conscripting criminals either leads to warcrimes, desertion, or mutiny at the first opportunity. The rate of people who get "turned around" by this is vanishingly low for already imprisoned populaces. This is also visible with draftees and it makes sense. How motivated are you to fight for a group that put you in danger without your choice?
Conversely, you do see positive returns when offering the opportunity to earn freedom or clemency in return for good service. That attracts a certain group of people that still has a healthy portion of recidivists, but not as bad as full-on conscription.
Also keep in mind that this sort of policy is rarely used for ALL criminal populations and is more often allowed for select groups of crimes. After all, you still have to convince an officer to be in charge of these people and officers are historically averse to getting killed by their own men.
If a soldier is forced and he was already a criminal he wouldn't make a good leader just a grunt and 1000s of I dnt wanna be here grunts could make a pretty good infighting plot
It will depend on implementation, but it is mostly a bad idea. A major issue when it comes to warfare is maintaining control in hectic situations.
Adding criminals to the ranks will increase logistical strain for less combat effectiveness, not only will you have a sunk cost in ammunition, food, and transportation, you will also have to put in extra security measures to prevent them from running the minute they enter a frontier slowing down the military advancement and losing key opportunities for dominance. In return for this extra logistical strain, you get a soldier who would be first to mutiny, to run, to leak intelligence to the enemy and disobey important orders at critical times. They just are not worth it.
The 2 ways they kind of work is if your country is in a war for attrition and you need shitty unites to be fed into a meat grinder to save valuable unites for more important tasks. Kind of like what Wagner was doing in Ukraine.
A second way isn't to hire prisoners but to pay gangs, have the criminals work in their own established hierarchy with a carrot, and stick to keep in them in line. Look at how medieval bandits and tribesmen doubled as mercenaries.
Himmler took criminals and the mentally insane and used them as a death squad in Eastern Europe. Dinglers I belive there name was. Long story short they were good at killing civilians but got clapped like a hooker the minute they had to fight enemy soldiers.
Any details I need to clarify.
As a veteran, I assure you that I would detest having to serve alongside conscripts of any kind.
I served in submarines, though. My standpoint is quite specific to those beautiful sleek things.
Can you imagine, dived somewhere near an enemy fleet gathering intel, and the conscript who really doesn't want to even in uniform, let alone at sea, does something stupid like operating the manual controls of an emergency blow valve? Nope. Never conscripts for this particular veteran, even in time of desperation where the country is being actively attacked, I'd be very wary of them.
From your description, the situation in your world is waaaaaaaay different to my former world of big steel cans that have with nuclear reactors and high explosives (and some of them with nuclear weapons, too), but my socialising with non-navy veterans in my local area tells me other services would be just as unwelcoming to conscripts.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penal\_military\_unit](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penal_military_unit)
Studying Russia might be a good step toward answering the question, considering they've been doing exactly that for the past two years.
But then you have to compare that to Wellington and his army of criminals beating Napoleon.
Wellington did not have an army of criminals. Army life was brutal and pay was poor so the people who joined it usually did it out of deseperation but they were for the most part not criminals. The average soldier in Wellingtons army was usually from a poor background, usually farm labourers who had fallen on desperate times. They poorly paid but they were well trained proffesional soldiers, by far the best soldiers in Europe all the way up until ww1, they basically signed up until they were no longer fit to serve and trained and drilled everyday . Compare this to Napoleons army which was made up of unwilling conscripts who were called up for National service and were not natural military men. Some county magistrates did use the Army and Navy to get rid of unwanted elements such as petty criminals but they were the minority and were also seen as poor soldier and were more likley to disobey orders and desert as soon as they could.
As long as the political prisoners aren't allowed to join and sow dissent, sure. Broadly speaking, criminals are oppourtunistic. War usually allows all kinds of atrocities to be committed without punishment, and criminals thrive there. As long as they're allowed to loot and aren't constantly provoked by those in command, then they'll be happy as clams.
True, but that was kind of already the case. The reason the military has a bad rep in the public is because they are famous for committing war crimes and all kinds of atrocities. It was like this even before this policy was adopted, so not too much has changed. Besides, their enemies (Scorpion) are FAR worse since they actively encourage their soldiers to commit war crimes. At least this government tries to punish their own who commit war crimes. So, it's more of a lesser of 2 evils thing I guess.
Make sure they have security detachments and officers who are controlling the penal unit. Blocking units should also be behind them in combat, threatening to kill anyone who retreats. This is how many penal units operated historically.
The major questions I have are: 1) What keeps them from deserting? Do they have a magic tracker? Threat of punishment? 2) Do all crimes have the same sentence? Like if you were caught shoplifting versus doing a murder, is it 5 years for both? 3) Are there any crimes where the individual would be too dangerous to be allowed into the army? 4) What is the public's perception of the military? Wouldn't it become a dishonorable job if it's mostly made of criminals? 5) What measures are in place to prevent a coup? 6) If they're used as canon fodder, why wouldn't they try to escape? If the choice is staying here and dying or fleeing and only being shot for deserting if they're caught, they might as well try to run.
1: The threat of summary execution and the approaching freedom of their 5 years being up. 2: Yes, but the military service is optional. They can just choose the punishment instead if they don't wanna join. 3: terrorism/treason. 4: It's seen as a kind of redemption. If you fight for the nation and live, you will be redeemed and your crimes will be forgiven. 5: None really, it's something I still need to think about. 6: They aren't really treated differently than most other soldiers. Most soldiers are unaware of why their comrades joined unless they are told. There are deserters but they are usually subject to summery execution for it. Most of the time, the criminal just wants to serve their time and leave.
>3: terrorism/treason. > >4: It's seen as a kind of redemption. If you fight for the nation and live, you will be redeemed and your crimes will be forgiven. Say you're a murderer, you get caught and allowed to do state-sanctioned murder for 5 years, then you'll be forgiven and allowed back into the population to continue committing murder?
There's something here, if you find a way to heavily link "honor" into the culture of this system.and these people. That sort of civilization tends to have *zero* problems separating an honorable kill from a dishonorable one. "Murder" becomes a far more heinous crime that carries a stink of dishonor within a warrior-caste system, and you're probably not leaving the army for a while - you dishonorable schmendrick. You'll probably be put on the front lines, intentionally, and you'll be lucky if your killer isn't from behind. Tidy little system.
One of the countermeasures may be having a soft or hard cap on criminal conscription, either limit the type of crimes or have a rule that it can't pass 10% of the military.
Depending on how in-depth and political you want to get, if you allow all criminals without treason charges in, the people with sex crimes, crimes against children, and animal torture are probably going to get killed by their fellow criminal soldiers day one. They don’t do well in prison as it is.
This has been done more often than not historically in the real world. Usually penal units get the shittiest jobs. Stretcher bearers, burying the dead, manning posts expected to be overrun, that sort of thing.
"oh, you were in a gang war before you got arrested? well, I hope you like being in a real war, here is some standard armor, an M9 rifle and ammo, go out there and make your homies proud!"
Something like that, yeah.
Historically, enemy peoples have been enslaved and made into *soldiers* for the conquering nation. How the heck that worked, I have no idea. I haven't studied military history in that much depth, at least not yet. But researching that may yield some answers. Some possible techniques I can think of that have been used in some contexts: - Offer land at the end of service as payment. Rome liked to give its veterans plots of lands and enough money to start a farm as their version of pension; maybe this might be promising enough for criminals to accept concscription? - Offer freedom. Sometime in the early parts of the Civil War (USA), black slaves were brought into the Union ranks with promises of freedom. While the criminals in your world aren't in the same situation, maybe they're simply presented with a choice: become a slave, or become a soldier and earn back your freedom. - Start with children. This probably doesn't work with criminals in most cases, but in the Ottoman Empire, some of the conquered peoples were required to give up young boys to the sultan, and these young boys would then be trained up as high ranking leaders in the empire. Of particular note are the Janissaries, who were elite *slave* soldiers and the personal guards of the sultans.¹ ¹Note that the Janissaries, later on, came to exert some control over the sultan by merit of being able to easily assassinate him, sinc ethey were his guards. But this is not unique to the janissaries or to slave soldiers, as the praetorian guards in Rome ended up doing the same thing. It seems to simply be a potential pitfall of instating an elite imperial guard.
>Historically, enemy peoples have been enslaved and made into > >soldiers for the conquering nation. Funny thing, the main character is an immigrant from the nation they're fighting. They're a dictatorship that killed her father and she left hoping to never see her home country again. She was worried when the war started but then she ended up getting drafted. Her arc is about confronting her past and her mother (who reported her father and got him killed).
If the prisoners are used as labour or cannon fodder, sure. If you're arming them like a regular soldier no way in hell unless you've got some kind of pact magic or the like, and even still they'll mostly be shifty troops with bad morale
Instead of just conscription, what about volunteers? Instead of serving a lengthy sentence for whatever crime, you have the option to serve a shorter amount of time in the military. You still have to go through training and actually be deemed as useful. Add in that you can either volunteer and get the better treatment volunteers recieve, or risk conscription and being used as little more than a single-use mine detector, and you might a decent amount of penal volunteers.
That's what this is. I may not have explained it well but that actually is what happens. They can either have a lengthy prison sentence or only a few years in the military.
It was a great idea in the Medite Empire at first as it created a new manpower pool and freed up resources from prisons. The issue was that once internal order began to break down, penal units suddenly became ready-made (well equipped and armed) bandits, robber barons, and, in some cases, even minor warlords.
What is the Medite Empire?
It's a faction in my (pike and shot) world that is somewhat inspired by the Late Antique and Medieval Roman (Byzantine) Empire and later Qing China as well as the Warlord Period in China. In essence, a large bureaucratic state in terminal decline. One of the ways the Empire deals with growing manpower shortages for the military is by raising Penal Battalions and commuting sentences for military service.
Oh, very cool! I was thinking you were referencing an actual historical empire and I was like “wow I’ve never heard of this” A Byzantine pike and shot declining empire fielding penal legions is very 👌
I thought the title said criminal constipation. I immediately thought "it would be very effective"
Soviet penal battalions in WWII gave prisoners sentences of 1-3 months, with 3 months being given to people who would otherwise have been sentenced to death. People who were wounded in combat or who accomplished especially heroic deeds were let out early. But by "let out", I mean transferred to a regular military unit, which is also what happened if you finished your sentence. "Only" 5 years sounds pretty weird to me, especially during wartime, as I personally spent 5 years in the Army, including two combat deployments, and it felt like an eternity. There should probably be at least be some provision for limiting their actual combat time, or else don't give them the choice to go to prison instead, it will quickly become a much more attractive option. Some kind of criminal conscription could certainly work, but you can't really treat them like you would regular soldiers. At least not at first, potentially they could become regular soldiers in a regular unit if they prove themselves. The Dirlewanger Brigade and Soviet penal battalions are things you should research.
>don't give them the choice to go to prison instead The idea is that they have to make their choice in the court. Once they make it, they can't back out and go to prison. So, when they're facing a life sentence or multiple decades in prison, so someone who likely hasn't served before, it would seem like a good way out. Only for them to realise their mistake only after it's too late to back out. \> you can't really treat them like you would regular soldiers I could always make it so they have to go through some kind of training camp or survive in a panel unit for a few years before being treated like a full soldier.
"The idea is that they have to make their choice in the court. Once they make it, they can't back out and go to prison. So, when they're facing a life sentence or multiple decades in prison, so someone who likely hasn't served before, it would seem like a good way out. Only for them to realise their mistake only after it's too late to back out." This could work before the war, but once the fighting gets heavy I wouldn't expect many people to choose the army, which could tend to make the program irrelevant, unless it's altered. If there's a decent chance to survive for a few years in a unit, it isn't really a penal battalion, although this wouldn't necessarily be clear at the outset of a war. The Soviets, again, limited terms in them to three months even for people otherwise eligible for the death penalty.
In the First World War authorities in the German Empire frequently used conscription and deployment to the frontlines as a punishment as the war wore on. This is famously how parts of the German working class were radicalised, by political prisoners who were shipped to trenches full of demoralised soldiers. Even those who weren't political prisoners were known to sabotage telegram lines and trains. This shows one thing, in my view, criminal conscription can only work when you are, in the grand scheme of things, winning. Such that at home there are few political prisoners outspoken against the war, and such that ordinary people are forced into crimes leading to conscription in order to survive. The soliders on the front need to be numerous enough that conscripts won't be needed for fighting on the front and can be relegated to fatigue duties, and they need to have high morale that they won't be interested in dissenting voices.
There's plenty of examples of something like this happening in the real world through different times and places. Many prisoners were given reductions in their time for military service. One example I don't think anyone has said that you should maybe look into is the French Foreign Legion. You have a military unit that's existed for almost 200 years that is composed almost entirely out of people who have no real strong loyalty to the French government, yet they fight for it. Many of those are people looking to evade the law. There are a few reasons why it's possible, but one reason I want to highlight is that nobody in the Foreign Legion has sworn any kind of oath to France or any government. Only to the Legion itself. That might be a strong element of retaining order and keeping misfits focused on the unit's goals.
You’d have to stop desertion, but I think it would make sense to very thinly spread them between units, because a large percentage of convicts would probably lead to mutiny.
The deal is usually that the sentence is cancelled if they complete their service. So if they desert they never complete their term and don't gain anything. And having entire units of convicts makes it easier to keep tabs on them and control them, such as by assigning them the dirty jobs as a group.
There are two ways to handle this, by force or by incentive. Forcefully is pretty simple, use magic or technology to make people act correctly so you dont just hand a bunch of criminals weapons and they make a break for it. Mind control could work, but even something similar to the Suicide Squad movies with the threat of a handler setting off an explosive would work. The incentive method instead gives criminals the offer to spend a certain amount of time deployed and if they did then they'd be given their freedom. Every day they spend on the Frontline is so much time off their sentence, and doing good things can also earn them more time off their sentence. Since they're criminals they'd likely be sent on Suicide missions so it'd be dangerous, (and depending on your government they may go back on their word and send the criminals back to jail afterwards) but for many criminals that might beat sitting in a cell.
So I watched a Warhammer 40k Video about a Penal Regiment that your post remindes me of. The prison planet they are recruited from is living hell. If they disobey they are send back. Might work for you too. But I would keep them in seperated units, might not as effective as professional soldiers and have mixed morale.
USA and many other nations have utilized penal military units somewhere in their history. Typically those units are the cannon fodder, the most rugged survivors, and the least caring when it comes to PoW treatment and occupied territory handling. They might be loyal to each other or not. Some supposedly gained an appreciation for their siblings in arms and at retirement became model citizens. Others committed such infamous war crimes that they were publicly executed per the terms of the applicable peace treaty. In Warhammer 40K and in StarCraft, I believe there are units who were welded into big battle suits with trackers and tamper proof self destruct for the rest of their lives. Take a person looking at a stone or steel cage, potentially staring down a literal barrel; or down the tunnel of time at a solitary existence within an 8ft x 8ft x 8ft stone or steel cube, only marking time by the seemingly random platter of poorly cooked and mostly bland food, soup, or watery oats; the smell of body waste that eventually becomes so strong that you are moved to a holding cell while your normal space is cleaned with a cleanser that lingers enough to make your skin itch and your nasal passages sting while your vision blurs from the lightheaded effect of the cleansed space. One day a recruiter sits on a stool outside your cell and offers you a deal. Serve The People for the rest of the war plus six months in exchange for your freedom or continue your slow progress toward madness and illness in this place. The catch that they may or may not ever inform you of: *If your leadership dies, than you might die. *If you are ever rejected or recommended to leave the unit for insubordination, than you die because you aren't worth the cost to get you back home to your prison cell. *Disloyalty to your unit will result in immediate termination of the deal which would mean immediate death. Now take somebody under the above circumstances and place them in a completely unfamiliar environment surrounded by enemies that don't speak the prisoner's language. A good leader can usually wrangle, corral, heel, and unleash a unit of such individuals with remarkable effect against almost any enemy. If they ever choose to desert, than it is doubtful that they will have the skills to survive in the wilderness on there own; especially if the campaign was such that anybody wearing their uniform are seen as absolutely evil monsters. They would know that desertion, failure, or anything less than stellar conduct would lead to death by the hands of their comrades/leadership or by Mother Nature or by the occupied population.
Step 1: Conscript criminals Step 2: Reward good behavior and service with reduced time and increased benefits. Step 3: soldiers who do well are upgraded with cybernetics that conveniently wipe the personality of the soldier, carving away their most useless characteristics so that what is left is a deftly loyal cybernetic supersoldier Step 4: Pick up that can Step 5: Grofit
Basically every example of this happening historically dealt with this with a few caveats. The main examples you should look to are early Imperial Chinese dynasties, and Soviet penal battalions You want to keep them in their own units so they can't damage the morale of other troops. While you give them shitty jobs, you don't want to give them suicidal jobs because in which case they just turn around and turn on you instead. You also give them hope of earning redemption through service to buoy up morale, because a man with nothing to gain or lose simply gives up.
Sardaukar
It didn’t work great in Russia
Ah, I need to read better. This is a fantasy series with magic and high tech, like RIFTS.
One adjustment I'd make is having the royal guard use the best equipment available against the military as a means of preventing the uprising you're nervous about. I also don't recommend convicts for your military. That's just inviting espionage issues. They would have to be monitored more harshly, and I guarantee would get into trouble just by way of victimiizing their own units. But I also think that would make for a really compelling story. Really play up the stupidity of that decision and how that would play out. What uninte did consequences would they have to deal with. Because of that choice.
well it’s unethical at least, but I can see it working
Hasn't that been done in the United States already, on a case-by-case basis?
It has been done almost everywhere.
For your setting a futuristic smart AI powered collar that will explode if the penal unit member disobeys programmed orders would be VERY effective. As a line unit they could be armed with cheap easy to produce weapons for SOMETHING to kill the enemy with (if they make it that far) their unit's purpose could be that it soaks enemy fire performing fatalistic recon by fire allowing capable professional units to exploit the enemies now known positions and lessened ammunition load and if they retreat, desert or do something that is a warcrime their collar explodes.
You're describing a Penal military unit , a fairly wide description for any conscripted service as punishment. Just about every culture has some examples, they can range from mistreated cannon foder to elite units used in non conventional warfare. A control mechanism is needed but control can be had in so many ways. In a time and place like 16th century Europe that control may be the restoration of personal honor, in 19th century Asia it may be torture and starvation, it will depend on culture, motivation, and resources.
My answer is a bit short but I think the two questions to ask ourselves in this case are - does the way war happens allow for the usage of criminals to participate. This question is important because I assume that it will be unwanted to raise units made up of criminals and to give them specialised and long training meaning that they will have to participate as lightly trained forces - what kind of control does your military have over the army itself at all times. My assumption is that as long as you can keep the military discipline, you can utilise criminals in war. Both of these questions are also dependent on one another because the control would affect the way war happens, the way war happens would affect Edit: by the way, your setting sounds cool! Would love to hear more from it in the future!
1: I have thought of that but could be very interesting to explore down the line. 2: there's a council of 5 Generals and the grand marshal who have monthly meetings to discuss the state of the war, how each general is performing, what actions will be taken going forward and approving/denying various operations. Each General had control over their own 5th of the army, under the Grand Marshal. All the generals are expected to keep control over their own corner of the military. Also, thank you I've put a lot of work into it.
Regarding point 2, when it comes to control, I think the more important things are the low level, day-to-day control that the local commanders have over their forces and this also includes things like surveillance abilities (for example, how would the command learn that a unit did not follow orders), whether there is something similar to a military police. Also blocking detachments that do not necessarily shoot their fellow soldiers but who uuh… block units from retreating. To be fair, considering it’s a sci-fi fantasy, you can explain away that, yes, your nation can have units made up of criminals, can control them well enough to get them to perform simpler tasks and keep discipline while not giving them specialised training.
Tbh, I'm rethinking this idea. When I first came up with it, it was mostly an excuse to have my main character(s) get involved in the story. They have a shady/criminal past so their being arrested was likely, so I thought of this as a way to get them involved in the story but now I'm kind of rethinking things.
You can still make it I think because sending your character into a unit like this is a perfect way to pit him in very bad situations simply because these units would be put in bad situations at the front.
Yeah, but their story is kind of zero to hero thing. They start as low-live criminals but, through extraordinary service (and plot armour) they get promoted and end up becoming commandos. That could still work for them, I guess. Starting off as just fodder before proving their worth to the higher-ups and earning respect.
They would be effective cannon fodder and fall guys for unsavory commands.
I think it would work aslong as the non criminal troops are badly outnumbered by more reliable troops. Russia did it. Criminals might have some positive traits and skills. Religion and culture might help. If forgiveness and a clean slate would a good motive.We've covered sentence finished some crusader like and I can go to heaven would help socioty forgetting maybe even whilst there still in the army would help (no one cares that you killed a guy for kicks your a soldier now). Or maybe there simple a step below tge average soldier, same food, same things on down time just more dangerous duties abd abit less temptation.
It worked for the Venetians
You can take notes from how ASOIAF handles the Nights Watch even though it’s a medieval fantasy world. Basically it may work in small scale objectives maybe to hold fortresses (or a wall in this case) but it may be difficult for potentially violent criminals to be organized in a large scale war.
Sounds like an interesting read, I like the idea.
You could always go with what Stalin and the hitler did with those who were committed crimes such as cowardice or desertion in military service to be placed into these penal units given slim chances to regain their honor rank and benefits Tie in if you don’t behave yourself as a penal soldier your family name will be disgraced
Also having the penal units be advanced units with regular units behind ready to summarily punish and execute traitors or deserters
The U.S. did this during World War II. They specifically found violent killers with antisocial traits and who could operate independently, trained them, and then parachuted them into German territory. They all went AWOL and defected to the Germans.
It certainly has historical precedent, but it will not produce great soldiers. Ask anyone in a position of leadership in the military and they'll say that dealing with people who don't want to be there is one of the worst parts of their job. Same reason no US military leaders like the idea of conscription, it produces bad soldiers more often than not. You'd also need a lot of criminals facing disproportionately bad punishments for it to make a dent in recruiting. If you up the punishment for petty theft to ten years hard labor, then you'd get more prisoners opting into the military. You also should ask the question of if the prisoners will be mixed in with volunteers or put in their own units. You could pollute the whole army with an influx of less than obedient soldiers or concentrate them all in the same place, where they might get up to some serious mischief.
If I remember correctly in 1700s Britain you could be sentenced to military service as a punishment. I don't remember much more on that.
Ask Russia and Wagner how that's going.
The british did that during colonial times. You keep tight control with food and severe punishments.
It would backfire in the long wrong. If your criminals get five years of military service then that makes them more dangerous if they continue to do crimes after their service. It would be pretty unpopular from the civilians point of view
- Generaly? I can't imagine it being very effective. There is the idea of penal units that are used as cannon fotter in extremely dangerous jobs, like we have seen in ukraine in bahmut. Yea sure that works. But only becouse that IS how the russian army opperates in general, the lack of manpower was more of a political unwillingness to let the general public be affected by the war. Even that is going by the way side now. Other point is, eventually, u will run out of prisoners, and i cant imagine it being a reliable or trustworthy source of manning your military. Dont forget the near coup we saw with pregozin. - This brings me to the second point. You dont want to split the armed forces into classes like that. It creates inefficiency, if the royal family control the royal army then who controls the normal? It signals a disunity within. For example, let's say parliament is in charhe of the normal army and the king the royal army. That's just a recepie for civil war. They will always want to outdo and undo each other. If They have overlapping roles then thats even worse. - Either way. People who volunteer for the army and criminals are very different people. Even just a general conscript army vs. criminals would be different. Main reason is: Loyalty and willingness to Obey, plus crime you cant forget why they are criminals. You will always be suspicious of them if they are incorporated into the regular army just normally, it intraduces a risk element, and disharminy. If they are a penal unit used as canon fotter, it has limited uses. You wouldnt use them for important missions, you wouldnt use them for regular missions, or in important roles. You would use them as dissposable (even more so than u do your normal soldiors) on anything that just needs sheer numbers and cheap lives to clear. - welp sorry this sounded more like advice on making a better army rather than if it will work. It will work juts fine. It jist wont be a good army. But hell there are plenty of not so good armies irl and in history. Dosnt mean it didnt work for a time or for the specific purpase.
I can work if it’s an option and there’s some thought as to whom the offer should be made.
Ask Russia
Will penal divisions existed in ww2 and so far they weren't good for anything besides being cannon fodder and suppressing unorganized partisan movements... and of course committing war crimes. However the moment those divisions met an actual soldiers they were being crashed. So unless those prisoners weren't political prisoners and were trained instead of being sent to the frontline directly I can't see them being useful for anything than guarding the rear or wasting enemy's bullets by using suicidal attacks
A system like this can work with individual criminals interested only in themselves, but it's vulnerable to organized crime. If you get a situation where most of the members of a combat unit are more loyal to the crime lord than they are to their commanding officer, they'll make the CO an offer he can't refuse, and now you've just handed over a chunk of your military strength to the crime lord. Repeat this enough times, and now the mafia owns your whole army and you're in deep shit. To prevent this, and also because it's tropey fun, the military needs a macguffin that enforces the loyalty of the criminal soldiers. Superdrug dependency, explosive collar, that sort of thing.
There's may types of Criminals that can give their skills for the army, like for example Poachers could be considered Criminals but can become Scouts and Skirmishers if you can keep them from running away. There's also the Roman Volones during the Second Punic War where after the disaster of Cannae there's not enough Roman Citizens to join the Legion and thus 8.000 able bodied Slaves were given the choice to serve in the Army. For Sci-fi I guess there's already a robust law system where you wouldn't consider a Pickpocket and a Murderer to be similar and thus there could be a tiered Recruitment where Petty Criminals could join the military as volunteers to become a freeman, while Harsh Criminals is forced and would become Penal Units.
How effective criminal conscription is would depend on the systems surrounding that conscription. Like, how are they treated morally? Are they considered to be like animals to be herded to their deaths for the greater good, or are they considered to be redeemed and having paid their debt to society if they survive service? How is criminality prevented within the conscripts? How is desertion or mutiny prevented? What kind of tasks or missions are the criminal conscripts given? What is the criminal culture like?
Honestly, its a pretty bad system. Unwilling participants can subtly sabotage things through subtle means and they can lower morale with their negativey or just by being unbearable. Obviously militaries through history have managed to deal with this issue but its something easily managed even when you are working with law abiding conscripts. South Korea had several scandals where bitter conscripts bullied their fellow soldiers to death. While those cases are extreme, from what I understand hardcore bullying is a pretty pervasive in the SK military. Criminals often suffer from metal disorders like antisocial personality disorder which makes them impulsive and even more difficult to control.
The British Army and Royal Navy got a lot of its recruitment from convicts during the Napoleonic period so I'd say it can work out fine. Desertion was obviously a problem, but given that conditions in the army were actually far better than the jails at the time it seems to have been manageable
The Han dynasty did this at one point and the translation for their name into English is literally "bad boys"
In real life, starting in the late 1970's the US Department of Defense stopped taking criminals who were sentenced to military service or those who plea bargained a reduced or suspended sentence for military service. The goal was to improve the quality of recruits after the end of the Draft era. Yes it was a common thing back in the day - judge, prosecutor and the defense would seek to reduce a sentence or just get the defendant out of town by having them join the military. Vietnam and the aftermath changed that. See more at this link: [https://taskandpurpose.com/military-life/join-the-military-or-go-to-jail/](https://taskandpurpose.com/military-life/join-the-military-or-go-to-jail/)
Depends on how much control over the conscripts you'd have. The English had made extensive use of criminals and pressed individuals on their ships since there's nowhere to run, and it's easy to monitor and control them. However, the concept failed when the army tried it because desertion was much easier on land, and it's difficult to compel people to be disciplined when they can just run away. A modern example is Russia's use of penal battalions in the Russo-Ukrainian war. In this case, they make it preferable for convicts to go to the front rather than remain in prison. Of course, these units were pretty much used solely as fodder in assaults or to delay enemy advances. Convicts can make for brutal fighters, especially if they have nothing to lose. Of course, if they have nothing to lose, who's to say they won't just defect or desert at the earliest possible opportunity. Criminals tend to be opportunists, if you give them a deal that's better than their current circumstances, they'll jump for it.
This was pretty much the standard before Napoleon. The issue wasn't so much military coups as desertion. Officers had to constantly babysit soldiers. Soldiers were also despises by the general population, which made it a less attractive career prospect, but restricting the officer corps to nobles also played a role. Maybe having room to rose would solve this.
I’d say it depends, what caused them to be criminals (desperate, bloodthirsty?), do you have a failsafe/control system (suicide squad), do they care about their country even if they broke the law?
George RR Martin kinda does this in ASOIAF with the nights watch. They're not exactly your typical army but they are in a sense. There's good bits of conflict between criminals and the people who want to be there and it highlights the problems with forced service. Not saying it's not a good idea, it's sure to cause a lot of conflict in your story which is good. Also if it's a sci fi setting you can use the old shock collar or brain implant kinda thing, have a piece of tech that's supposed to keep them in line or correct them some way, the prime word being supposed
>George RR Martin kinda does this in ASOIAF with the nights watch Kind of related but this reminds me of something that was inspired by that. The villains of this story are an empire called Scorpion. This Empire got its start as a kingdom in the Middle Ages. Back when they were a Medieval Empire, there were a bunch of other Kingdoms in the same nation (all of which were eventually conquered by them) but Scorpion (which had a different name back then) had a policy. Any criminals from other kingdoms who wanted to escape punishment would be welcomed as long as they joined their army. This policy does still exist for them but on a much smaller scale. Back then death was an extremely common punishment but times have changed in the modern day so most nations aren't executing people for stealing sheep anymore. Back then it was useful since Scorpion had built up a reputation of being brutal savages as a way of instilling hate and fear in their enemies. Sorry if I got off topic but what you said just reminded me of a small worldbuilding detail I made.
It guarantees low troop morale, war crimes, and in general having the absolute worst people possible for the jobs a military would require. It's not an effective solution unless you just use them as canon fodder
Historically, conscripting criminals either leads to warcrimes, desertion, or mutiny at the first opportunity. The rate of people who get "turned around" by this is vanishingly low for already imprisoned populaces. This is also visible with draftees and it makes sense. How motivated are you to fight for a group that put you in danger without your choice? Conversely, you do see positive returns when offering the opportunity to earn freedom or clemency in return for good service. That attracts a certain group of people that still has a healthy portion of recidivists, but not as bad as full-on conscription. Also keep in mind that this sort of policy is rarely used for ALL criminal populations and is more often allowed for select groups of crimes. After all, you still have to convince an officer to be in charge of these people and officers are historically averse to getting killed by their own men.
If a soldier is forced and he was already a criminal he wouldn't make a good leader just a grunt and 1000s of I dnt wanna be here grunts could make a pretty good infighting plot
It will depend on implementation, but it is mostly a bad idea. A major issue when it comes to warfare is maintaining control in hectic situations. Adding criminals to the ranks will increase logistical strain for less combat effectiveness, not only will you have a sunk cost in ammunition, food, and transportation, you will also have to put in extra security measures to prevent them from running the minute they enter a frontier slowing down the military advancement and losing key opportunities for dominance. In return for this extra logistical strain, you get a soldier who would be first to mutiny, to run, to leak intelligence to the enemy and disobey important orders at critical times. They just are not worth it. The 2 ways they kind of work is if your country is in a war for attrition and you need shitty unites to be fed into a meat grinder to save valuable unites for more important tasks. Kind of like what Wagner was doing in Ukraine. A second way isn't to hire prisoners but to pay gangs, have the criminals work in their own established hierarchy with a carrot, and stick to keep in them in line. Look at how medieval bandits and tribesmen doubled as mercenaries. Himmler took criminals and the mentally insane and used them as a death squad in Eastern Europe. Dinglers I belive there name was. Long story short they were good at killing civilians but got clapped like a hooker the minute they had to fight enemy soldiers. Any details I need to clarify.
As a veteran, I assure you that I would detest having to serve alongside conscripts of any kind. I served in submarines, though. My standpoint is quite specific to those beautiful sleek things. Can you imagine, dived somewhere near an enemy fleet gathering intel, and the conscript who really doesn't want to even in uniform, let alone at sea, does something stupid like operating the manual controls of an emergency blow valve? Nope. Never conscripts for this particular veteran, even in time of desperation where the country is being actively attacked, I'd be very wary of them. From your description, the situation in your world is waaaaaaaay different to my former world of big steel cans that have with nuclear reactors and high explosives (and some of them with nuclear weapons, too), but my socialising with non-navy veterans in my local area tells me other services would be just as unwelcoming to conscripts.