Yeap, if they're going to shoot other people, might as well make it official.

Yes, I'm being facetious, but if we're going to have reeducation camps paid by public money, I'd rather have them learn more useful things than how to handle military equipment.

There is a ton of real world experience that "troubled" kids often become reliable citizens by a few years in the military.

What they learn is working in a team, taking responsibility and being accountable.

Not to mention that actual combat skill is a small minority of what is needed and trained in the military. Sure, the cook has a gun and knows how to use it, but otherwise he's more or less a cook only. Ditto for very very many positions both high and low skilled.

That's my whole point: since it's such a small minority already, let's take it out completely and replace it with something better.

You can't.

Armed forces are the legitimized monopoly of violence which are for better or worse absolutely necessary for the nation states of today and any time in the foreseeable future. The military's rigid command hierarchy and strict rules and ideas of duty really don't have any place in free society outside that monopoly. While it is absolutely necessary in a military to have the actions of many people dictated by the will of a single person, outside of that environment the necessity would be artificial and arguably the situation would be tantamount to slavery.

In other words it just isn't possible to recreate the structured existence of a soldier outside of a military force without extending the military well beyond the external force it must exclude itself to or legitimizing pseudo-slavery conditions. The costs of military upkeep are likewise very justifiable. Not that everything the military does is good or necessary, but the baseline of _having_ a military is fairly universally accepted as needed. Making up something else would look like a handout or a cost center and wouldn't stand up to the test of time and support.

Anecdotally, it worked for my uncle. The judge gave him the option to join the Marines or go to prison. He chose the former and he ended up becoming a productive member of society.

I've never heard of this type of judgement. Was this in the USA? What was your uncle's crime?

Happens quite frequently from what I'm told. Judges have quite a bit of discretion sometimes and try to sentence intelligently.

[anecdote] I used to know someone who was an addict. Judge gave her the choice of going on probation for a year, or 45 days in jail. The catch was if she took the probation offer but was picked up for drug offenses in that time, it was an immediate sentence of a year in jail.

She took the 45 days. Better the devil you know than the one you can't control! [/anecdote]

This was in the US, Pittsburgh, PA to be specific. However this was during the Vietnam war. Googling around, this sort of arrangement would make one ineligible from enlisting nowadays. There's an article referring to at least one case in which someone was denied enlistment[0] because of just such a case. Further research indicates that this is asked of recruits, meaning one could hypothetically perjure himself and maybe not get caught. I couldn't find any other references to this happening today, but there were loads of waivers issued back in the days of "the surge", so it wouldn't surprise me if some folks slipped through the cracks and got a "jail or enlist" talk from a small town sheriff or magistrate.

[0] - https://www.stripes.com/news/judge-said-army-or-jail-but-mil...

Hear of it at least 2 dozen times, various states, usa. Seems a bit less common now, but still happens. Usually for when a judge wants to give you an out. If you bail, you get full judgement.

sounds like GoT, take the black or be executed. Still, I think this is a point in favor of conscription - there's a big generation of young adults that don't learn how to adult anymore, basic stuff like laundry, ironing, regular exercise, (self-) discipline, etc.

If young adults are getting by without knowing how to iron, I suggest that says more about ironing than it does about the adults.

Why not have a laundry course then? Why force people who don't need it to waste time there?

The point isn't that they didn't learn to do laundry. Fixing it by offering a laundry course is just putting black tape over a warning light. They didn't have the environment growing up that made being an upright citizen easy or particularly likely. You can't teach a course about "responsibility" and expect good things.