Nations have armed prisoners and deployed them to war.
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Peer-reviewed historical studies document that nations and regimes have recruited individuals serving prison sentences or criminal convictions, arming them to fight as military units on active frontlines.
Abstract:The expendability of penal battalions has provided genocidal regimes with ample fodder for conventional wars, genocidal warfare, and cases in which such conscripts may become either perpetrators or victims. The unresolved charges of those who massacred civilians in Bucha, Ukraine, in 2022 extend to include suspects from a private military security company (PMSC) known as the Wagner Group. Vladimir Putin's regime has regularly contracted Wagner since its founding in 2014 in operations that led to its adaptation and development as a tool for war and very likely also the world's first for-hire band of perpetrators. This study tracks histories of penal battalions before outlining the evolution of Wagner as a significant force in global politics and conflict. The findings suggest that prosecution, prevention, or intervention will become even more difficult than it already is for institutions of international law. The apparent successes and rapid growth of Wagner tend to indicate that the use of penal battalions in genocidal wars is not confined to the pages of history. The unaccountability of such suspects could increase both the recruitment of many more genocidal offenders and further risk the expendability of what Richard L. Rubenstein identified as surplus populations. By framing penal battalions that die en masse in genocidal wars, the case of the Wagner Group may ultimately include civilian victims in Ukraine, perpetrators for-hire, and victims within the group's own battalions that the Kremlin deployed to die across the war's frontlines.
We consider the little-studied aspects of the use of persons who committed criminal offences as fighters and junior commanders on the front lines of the Great Patriotic War. We show the change in law enforcement practice at the beginning of the war, which allowed for the extrajudicial release of persons sentenced to penalties related to imprisonment. The second important area of research was the coverage of events related to the establishment, formation and activities of penal companies and battalions. We substantiate the inadmissibility of unreliable images of these processes in literature and cinema. One of the main goals of the study is to increase the interest of the scientific community and ordinary readers to the problems of the relationship held in the military transformations period of the elements of corrective labor system, subordinated to the People’s Commissariat for Internal Affairs of the USSR and People’s Commissariat of Defense of the USSR. Attention is focused on the need for more detailed coverage of the activities of penal units and subdivisions. As a result of the analysis of archival materials, memoirs and publications in the mass media, we come to the conclusion that the practice of reducing the level of criminal responsibility for a number of crimes, combined with attracting convicts to direct participation in hostilities, played a positive role in the protection of the Fatherland.
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