Writing a Criminal Army?

I've been thinking for awhile now that I might try and write a criminal army. Basically, these are criminals that are in jail and have been asked by the Leader of the nation to fight for them against the invading armies. If they survive the war, they would become freemen. The problem I have is simply, would they being sent free after the war is over be good enough to convince the criminals to join the army? If not, then what other reasons might they want to fight for the nation that has jailed them in the first place? My Suspension of Disbelief is broken because my first thought is that some would desert the army as soon as possible, and/or it will turn into the Dog Bites Back.

Yeah, deserting the Army the first chance they get would be a reasonable expectation, since the law enforcement system will usually be over-worked because of the war and especially since the nation's short-handed enough to have to rely on criminals that they probably can't afford to hunt them down right away. You'll definitely have to give them something more, like Land, Titles, Obscene amounts of Cash, basically anything that they can't realistically obtain if they run and turn outlaw.

For some people, it is a good enough incentive.

However, unless the country is desperate (in which case they have no means to offer prisoners anything they'd want and be unable to get on their own anyway), they would only extend this offer to certain people, to people who would be unlikely to defect at the first opportunity. Generally that means people who landed in jail not because they are "criminals" per se but rather because they made a mistake or a few that got them thrown into jail and that got them to count as "criminals" despite them not really wanting for it to be that way and being unlikely to have made those mistakes if they actually had the choice.

Essentially, that means that an offer of this sort is generally extended towards people who had good intentions but what they did wasn't so good. Those people generally will be fairly reliable during the duration of their community service, and one reliable soldier is more useful than three of dubious reliability.

And people of that sort generally do want to prove in some way that they really meant well. So if they are given the chance of being pardoned in exchange for community service, the only thing that could stop them is said service being something they simply can't do; for example, if you gave that opportunity to someone who isn't used to the concept of death at all and freaks out at the thought of possibly having to kill someone, I don't see that person agreeing to it.

edited 13th Mar '15 11:29:52 AM by Kazeto

Not having enough soldiers might not only be a matter of means though. It's entirely possible that they've already lost a good chunk of their manpower during a previous battle and they just don't have any more able-bodied men, forcing them to turn to their criminals. I suppose the big rewards could be reserved for the more skilled fighters among the prisoners, while the more petty criminals could be offered only their freedom.

edited 13th Mar '15 11:40:17 AM by FatBastard

The idea is that Nation A (Let's call them that because I haven't though of a name yet) are at war with Nation B. Nation A is confident at first that they would win because they have a large professional army, but Nation B shows up with an equally professional army that is about 1.5 to 2 times larger in size. Think of the Franco-Prussian War in which the Prussians went to war against France with a slightly larger army than the French because of better mobilization. Nation A decides to arm criminals because they feel it benefits them in many ways: Sending the criminals off to fight ensures that their professional army remains intact, it decreases the size of their prison population, and ensures that at least some criminals will be killed off. In terms of white vs Black, Nation A is a grey nation that has a cynically government.

In this case, nation A would definitely only give that chance to those who are unlikely to defect or do anything ... bad. They are pressed for manpower, but not desperate.

On this very website, there is a trope called Army of Thieves and Whores. It lists an historical example:

"'Convicted criminals' in Wellington's army often included debtors, poachers, petty thieves, and others whose crimes were either minor by modern standards or were committed because the perps were down on their luck. It is harder to estimate how many would have been hardened professional criminals."

If there was an army like Wellington's army that was made up with criminals convicted of minor crimes, do you think it would be reasonable that Nation A would give them the offer to be free?

edited 13th Mar '15 2:58:40 PM by Genesis890

After a certain amount of time served in the army, yes. As I'd said, it's essentially community service; they are working for a parole.

That is why such an offer would generally be limited to the types of people listed; people of that sort aren't in prison because they are degenerates who can't be let out, but rather because they did something that was wrong according to the law and they had to be punished, but it is very likely that they only did it because their hands were forced.

Take the poachers mentioned in the text you provided. Many of them did not poach because "it was fun" or any other gibberish, but rather because there simply happened not to be enough food to go around and people in the whole village were starving while a nearby forest belonging to some aristocrat was full of game. Because the noble had decided that they do not want anyone hunting in their forest, it was illegal poaching, but the poacher's hands were forced by a "do it or let people starve" situation.

Depending on the country and its financial capabilities, they might also offer wages—very low compared to those normal soldiers would get, but still—to those who serve for a parole. That offers an additional incentive to those who get such an offer because people generally don't chase them for whatever they did while they serve in the army, and whatever amounts of coinage they manage to learn for their service is still something they can use to set themselves on the right track once they are free.

So yeah, sure, I'm reasonably certain that there wouldn't be anything against giving them an offer to go free if they get through whatever the required service time is (or until the end of the war, as the deal tends to have a caveat of that sort), and actually keeping the word they gave. I mean, if you are keeping someone in jail for having debts or killing animals for noble reasons or whatever other "crime" that doesn't really matter in the grand scheme of things, would it not make sense to give them a chance to work it off and then let them go rather than keep them in some dank dungeon and have to pay money to feed them? Whatever food you'd have to get for them is food they might as well get while serving, and whatever wages they get if any are gold that you'd have to spend on keeping them from escaping anyway (or just a bit more than that), so for as long as you get people who don't do anything stupid you aren't losing anything by giving them that chance.

Thanks, I wanted to make sure I understood. Who should I talk to for military advice?

>> "Who should I talk to for military advice?"

Well, there isn't anyone I can recommend just like that right now, but I'll say that trying to research it via use of any half-decent search engine with some scepticism and some patience added is a good start, and you can simply ask questions here if there's anything you need to know in hopes that one of us will happen to know it.

Generally, researching it on your own does the job if you are decent or better than that at creating a world that makes sense for your story (which requires some basic stuff but also the ability to apply it, and the latter is why not everyone can do it) unless you are looking for really obscure details. And asking us, well ... at least some of us already went through that exact phase and those people, if they did anything about any things related to the issue you are having, just might be of help; that and whatever thing you are looking for, there's always the chance that some of us actually are interested in it and have access to some useful materials.

Well there's a Combat Writing Thread here, someone there might be able to help as well.

That's true, albeit I think that the questions that will be asked here will be closer to politics and logistics than anything combat-related.

Still, that's an option.

I curate combat-writing in Writer's Block; further afield there's the Military Thread over in OTC, which contains a lot of people who are able to help you. And I can point you towards relevant sources as needed.

The idea with my story is that it takes place in a world with about the same fashion and technology from roughly the mid 1800s to the late 1800s. If a large army were to invade a nation, what would it need to do to protect its lines of communication and its supply lines?

Franco-Prussian War as the model, you say...

Hmmm. This is right during a period of organizational transition. The Next Big Things in warfare are the railroad and the telegraph line, which revolutionizes logistics and demands the creation of vast new national organizations to call up vast numbers of recruits and to sustain them in the field; indeed, Prussia's decisive victory over France in the Franco-Prussian War was due largely to its organizational ability to exploit its railway system and to mass troops with unprecedented speed.

So, it's safe to say that the railway would really be what underpins an attacking force's supply lines, plus the depots where the trains can unload. Because these are attackers, the main threat once they enter enemy territory would come from francs-tireur guerillas occasionally cutting those rail lines. There is also the potential for much fun if it turns out the railways of Country B are of a difference gauge from the railways of Country A (as happened on the Eastern Front of WWII, and I believe also in the Franco-Prussian War), meaning engineers would need to essentially rebuild those railroads before they could be used.

If the terrain allows, and if the cavalry commander is enterprising enough (see: Nathan Bedford Forrest, Benjamin H. Grierson, James H. Wilson), there is also the possibility of a cavalry force hitting the railroad line; in which case, large numbers of troops would be tied up in defending railway depots and the like. Note, though, those American Civil War examples really benefited from America's large tracts of wilderness and frontier land; I can't recall any similar examples offhand from Europe, which was more obsessed in recreating the charges of the Napoleonic chevaux-leger-lanciers (see: Von Bredow's Death Ride) instead of using them as fast raiding forces.

That's not counting how a counterattack by Country B's forces might threaten rail depots, but that's less a matter of securing logistical lines and more a problem for Country A's main-force general.

Look into Oskar Dirlewanger.

Doesn't quite fit what OP described, since he's looking for an overall unit of ex-petty criminals instead of one singular Satan On Earth.

He headed one though.

Yeah, but the SS had plenty of issues even before they were desperate enough to recruit from the pond scum. Besides, Dirlewanger's unit was closer to Einsatzgruppen than a regular military unit.

That does highlight a point about the various penal/shtraf units in the war, though: for the most part, they weren't regarded as disciplined enough to take part in regular fighting. (For its part SS Group Dirlewanger was cut to pieces when it faced organized resistance in the Warsaw Uprising; poor discipline is not an asset in a firefight.) The Soviet use of them for mine-trampling and for opening attacks, and the German use of them for anti-partisan reprisals, are extreme but illustrative examples: because they're seen as useless for actual combat, they get handed the jobs nobody really wants, where their expendability and poor discipline won't hinder them. Use of a petty criminal unit to guard a railway would indicate one of two things: that the command thinks that sector is relatively safe, or else that command wants to take a brutal counter-insurgency strategy and figures that a criminal unit's lack of scruples would make it suitable for the task.

Sorry, I haven't been on for awhile. Thanks for the posts!

There's always unconventional solutions provided in Sci-Fi and Fantasy; see the Terrans in Starcraft and their 'Neuroresocialization'. Find a way to put some sort of 'dog collar' on the prisoners and you can establish a much more effective fighting force. Of course the effectiveness of such measures can vary depending on what you need for the story. A fully successful 'resocialization' which results in mindwiped drones produces a very different fighting force than, say, a system that implants 'killswitches' in the convicts which can be deployed by command if they get rowdy or try to go AWOL.

The subject of what you might deploy criminals for reminds me of some recent reading I've been doing on the Armenian Genocide, wherein a fair number of criminals were released from prisons and used by the Ottoman government to attack the Armenians. If you're looking for people who won't feel squeamish about genocide, prisons aren't a bad place to start checking.

An even more sadistic measure of control is Blue Cosmos' use of drugs in Gundam SEED. The three proto-Extended, Shani, Cortho, and Orga, are all given regular injections of Psycho Serum that turn them into deadly combatants, but will kill them after two hours. They have to return to base and they have to obey their commanders, or they are dead men.

edited 26th Apr '15 10:15:35 PM by AmbarSonofDeshar

Though, of course, the availability of such a drug or anything equivalent to it depends on the setting.

Because normally, anything that can kill you in two hours does this by shutting your body down or rapidly damaging your internal organs, both of which are as close to permanent damage as you can get without outright ripping parts of the body out. And if it has an effect, which it has if it's a Psycho Serum, then it can't simply be that it's something that will only get released into the body after the time is up and only then wreck it (even more rapidly) unless the antidote is already administered. So it would have to be a specially-made drug, one that in most settings either wouldn't be possible or would be expensive enough not to make it worth bothering with outside of specific situations.

Also, operating on a constant timer-to-die basis tends to rid people of any loyalty they might have ever tried to have, even more so than a "compliance leash" would.

Not sure if this has been mentioned elsewhere in the thread, but you might consider limiting this army to military prisoners. You know, people who were court-martialed for disobeying orders, cowardice, etc. At least these people would be used to military discipline, even if they weren't ideal soldiers. Of course, that might mean a smaller pool of recruits for this army of criminals.

Anyway, just a thought.

It may rid them of any loyalty, but when you'll be dead in x number of hours, being disloyal has very few rewards. As to it requiring very specific processes to synthesize, that's true of any of the methods of control already under discussion; not sure what made you single mine out. Finally, I didn't say it was a good idea, just that it's a particularly nasty one, which may be appropriate depending on the setting and nature of the army's employers.