The "Dirty Dozen" option

Okay, everyone remember that grimly funny little action movie Robert Aldrich made back in the smartass Sixties? It's World War II, and they need a bunch of insane people to carry out a dangerous commando attack on a villa full of German officers. Their solution is to round up what Arlo Guthrie called "the 'Group W' bench" (aka the stone cold scariest) prisoners they had, train them for the mission, and offer reduced sentences if they returned. Wonderfully cynical idea, right?

Well, why not? Prisons are incredibly expensive, but politicians are bound by constituents to be tough on crime. So prisons end up occupying a bigger and bigger chunk of the state budget and spawn a whole bunch of people with vested interests in keeping jails full at all times. So the conservative side of me asks, wouldn't your average prisoner love to serve in the military instead of being in San Quentin or Pelican Bay? Aren't some of these people trained in the basics of weapons handling and military-style squad tactics (to say nothing of distribution logistics)? And you don't need to go through that process of training people out of being normal and civilized and into being able to kill people effectively--creating soldiers!

Consider, too, that the public isn't likely to look unkindly on any horrible thing the current system wants to do to prisoners. A guy in that repository of great thinkers the Washington State Legislature introduced legislation to use roadkill to feed prisoners. Don't know if it got anywhere. (I'm sure it would have passed both chambers in Arizona unanimously.) I've never had the pleasure of eating prison food, but I"d bet dollars to donuts that military rations are better.