So you can't make up for your evil ways by being ready to die for your country? What is your point?

Since the Army no longer needs cooks and truck drivers, we have Halliburton to do these things, it is imperative that every new recruit is ready to fight. The article suggests that the quality of the new recruits is declining.

a draft coming...that or recruiting grandmothers.

If the waiver process involves a serious investigation into the suitability of the recruit and that recruit's successful rehabilitation, allowing ex-convicts to join the military does not seem a bad idea. The terribly high recidivism rates we face for both adults and juveniles has much to do with the lack of opportunities for ex-convicts. They often come from, and return to, high-crime neighborhoods were unemployment is very high, where personal safety is a problem, and where the temptations to re-engage in criminal behavior are manifold. We might want to talk about how sad it is that the army is so much more of an option for the poor than the rich, but ignoring that that we should recognize that the armed forces is actually doing something that many employers won't: giving ex-offendes an opportunity.

Two years ago my brother served a few months in prison on drug related charges. When he was released, nobody would hire him because of his record. He couldn't go back to college because people with drug convictions are ineligible for financial aid, and without a job, he couldn't pay tuition. So what else could he do? He joined the army last year - the only job he could get - and it has been amazing for him. I admit I was against him joining, (especially since he will be deployed to Afghanistan six weeks from now), but without the army, he would have nothing. He would be working a minimum wage job, living in our parents basement, and hanging out with the same druggies that he hung out with before going to prison.

At least the military is giving people with records a chance.

The article tells us with breathless enthusiasm that the armed services are taking in people with criminal activity in their backgrounds. I remember 30 years ago when I was in the military and there were many stories about how judges had given someone before him (and they were all “him” then) of jail time or enlist in the military. Uniformly, the people chose to enlist and, apparently, the military services didn’t have any problems accepting them. I always wondered how many of those cases resulted in the person continuing to foul up in the military and how many managed to straighten out their lives as a result of military training. (I think that the judges assumed that the military might straighten out the miscreants. But, I’m also sure, they figured that if it didn’t work the guys would then be someone else’s problem.)

So, this is a very old story and not something new.

what's the procedure for getting a waiver for being gay?

I personally have no problem with people being granted waivers to serve in the army. There are thousands of people rotting in jail cells or whom are unemployed after a sentence or probationary period. Since so many of the charges are petty and clogging up the prison system let these people give the army a try. No doubt that some of those recruits who were in gangs already known how to survive in an organization with a strongly respected pecking order and might do very well.

I don't mean to make light of the subject but maybe we can start a few special units filled with convicted killers to go after terrorists. No doubt Bin Laden would drop his shorts if left in the hands of some of our most accomplished murders.

It's hard for people with some sort of criminal record to get jobs. Why do you want to keep out of the armed services a kid who has some sort of criminal beef? It's not easy to get to adultholold without a record in a lot of neighborhoods. You aren't talking about rapists and killers here but people guilty of (mostly minor) property and drug crimes. Growing up a bit in the services is an option. Wouldn't be my choice of career path but better than staying in the same old neighborhood with the same kids and catching another conviction.

Where is your heart? Didn't you have any friends who had sold dope or stolen a car or broken into someplace? I don't mean to sound cavelier but people, especially young one, deserve a chance to take another run at it. There are worse alternatives for them and they might just make fine soldiers--not a profession for the tender hearted I might add.

I was drafted in 1968 during the Viet Nam conflict and trained and served with quite a few men who were given a choice by their judge-join the Army or go to jail.

No I had no criminal record just not enough money to continue college and keep my deferment.

The GI Bill did provide some help with that after my enlistment was up.

USA is holding the biggest GULAG in the world: 2.3 mln. prisoners (China has only 1.7mln) and the US incarceration rate is 10 times larger that in the most developed countries. The recruitment of prisoners is a natural step. After all, one can estimate that about 100,000 of them die in prison every year without any patriotic cause; this number is approximately 100 times larger than the military loss in Iraq! There will be no problem to double or triple the size of US Army; besides, former prisoners do not expect to be fully protected by body armor or well paid which makes the project economically attractive. There is one drawback: these soldiers would shoot their officers in a battle field. However, they will be very effective to do house searching, prison guarding, and exporting democracy to the underdeveloped countries.

As a person generally in favor of reforming drug laws to reduce the segment of our population that is unnecessarily incarcerated, I am sympathetic to the argument of those who see the army or reserve components as an outlet. However, as a former national guardsman and reservist, I view this development as a miner views a woozy-looking canary. The army often seems irrational or overboard in its approaches to recruiting policies, but its (near) zero tolerance policy with respect to drugs is firmly rooted in the breakdown of morale and discipline the armed forces experienced in the late Vietnam and post-conflict era of the 1970's. This is combined with the deliberate structuring of our military as a (relatively) small, mobile, highly technology dependent force with maximum firepower at its disposal. Believe me, the inside of an Abrams tank or Bradley fighting vehicle, especially one equipped with the latest networked fighting systems, is a genuine high-tech environment, encased with 20-60 tons of armor and lethal weaponry. You absolutely do not want a semi-stoned former drunk driver at the helm. You also don't want anyone with a history of criminal violence, domestic or otherwise, to have access to military weapons and training. Domestic violence is an ongoing and serious problem in the military, period. It is not a situation that needs to be aggravated by inducting individuals with and established pattern of this behavior. Military violence is genuinely and distinctly different from civilian criminal behavior. Discipline, unit cohesion, and morale may seem like abstract concepts, but they are the critical element that (usually) keeps warfighting from becoming violent chaos. It may not seem like it, but modern American warfighting doctrine has emphasized minimization of civilian casualties, careful target selection, and maximum mobility at all levels. This is epitomized in the destruction unleashed in the first Gulf War. It is not pretty, and it does not always work, but without the careful selection and training of troops, our warfighting doctrine simply cannot be applied. The paradox of modern war is the increased effectiveness of smaller, better trained/educated forces relative to the larger, more loosely selected conscript armies of the past. Relaxation of the selection standards is the first step toward the latter force structure. I agree with the poster who views the increased use of waivers for recuits with criminal records as the first concrete step down the path of a military draft.

It is especially interesting to me that the various National Guard components, who had the reputation in the bad old days as a dumping ground for drug users and minor criminals shunted away from the regular army, seem to have learned the lesson of selectivity better that the active component of the army. Or perhaps they just have not faced as sharp a decline in recruit numbers as the "regular" army, under the misguided assumption that one might be less likely to be deployed to Iraq or Afghanistan as a reservist.