‘Likely to make good soldiers’: mobilizing Britain’s criminal population during the First World War

Abstract During the First World War Britain’s criminals were mobilized in much same way as rest of society. Courts allowed defendants to avoid prison if they enlisted, while borstal boys, and later adult prisoners, also granted early release. Although enlistment offered a chance for rehabilitation, desirable due their violent nature, enlisting them reduced cost imprisonment at time straitened economic circumstances. How war was interpreted remembered left little room inclusion criminals, which effectively removed from collective narrative.