As the Brigade Trial Counsel (aka prosecutor), part of my job is to assist various commanders in ensuring good order and discipline among their units.  To say that this job becomes more difficult in a deployed location is like saying that zebras are striped.  The question underlying virtually every decision on discipline is “How do you deter Soldiers who have already lost many of their freedoms and don’t want to be here in the first place?”

In short, the common typical punishments the Army uses are:

1)      Forfeiture of Pay

2)      Reduction in Rank

3)      Extra Duty

4)      Restriction to certain areas

5)      Discharge from the military

6)      Confinement

Naturally, not all of these work out so well in a deployed environment.  Forfeiture of pay and reduction in rank still work. But the rest fall sort of flat.  Soldiers are already typically working 12 hour shifts, so there’s not a lot of time for extra duty.  Soldiers are already restricted to the base, so there’s not much further restriction.  Discharge from the military is the first thing many of the problem Soldiers want, meaning this is unlikely to provide much of a deterrent to misbehavior.   

Unfortunately, confinement in the military is not doled out every day.  It seems that only the most egregious offenses warrant the huge logistical burden of a court-martial (the only way to confine a Soldier).  Drug use, DUIs, normal assaults, and all sorts of other crimes are more commonly dealt with through lesser means.  As a result, the threat of confinement is very remote on the minds of most Soldiers.  Stay out of felony level misconduct, and you won’t land in jail.  It certainly helps their cause that we don’t exactly have a military prison right next door.

Thankfully, the old school nature of the military justice system, combined with the coddled nature of the modern Soldier, gives us a potent option straight out of last century: Hard Labor.  In a system filled to the brim with due process for Soldiers (too much for many commanders’ tastes), we are still nonetheless able to drive a Soldier into the ground the good ol’ fashioned way. 

While there are numerous hoops to sentence a Soldier to hard labor and to ensure that it’s done properly, you can nonetheless end up with a Soldier doing difficult menial tasks from 9 in the morning to 9 at night.  Filling sandbags and digging ditches are common, but one is not limited to useful work.  One could have a Soldier simply breaking rocks into smaller rocks. 

The fact that many of today’s Soldiers are used to desks, A/Cs, and 8 hour days only amplifies the effectiveness.  The prospect of manual labor can do wonders for striking fear in their hearts.  As an added bonus, summer is coming up, with average June highs of 98 degrees, and average July highs of 112. 

Given the comparatively posh amenities of a military confinement facility (for Soldiers), I’m sure several Soldiers will wish they were in prison before the summer is out.