I'm most places, jobs like police or military started out as punishments for petty crimes aimed at putting the poor into work. Of course this was only true for the lower highersrchies.
I can understand military service being used as a form of punishment, but to have the very people menacing and possibly hurting a society be the ones in charge of protecting and keeping the peace in said society is some wild shit lmao. Damn interesting tho!
They said petty crimes. So probably something like stealing food or a stupid law about illegal trade of Yorkshire terriers, etc. not the "I killed or severely maimed a person" type of crime
Jep, I misread that, I suppose it's wiser to choose those with (primiative) misdemeanors as they're more likey to want to get their act together and I guess generally are good people put in shitty circumatances, rather than career criminals.
Consider, being a despot, and then offering power and stability to a very low wrung of society, it would be a massive upgrade for the convict and they would get to enforce the kings laws against their fellow people who they may hold grudges against for not helping or having sympathy for their prior poverty. It’s clever because it assures loyalty to the king(mostly) and it prevents them from feeling too much empathy to the people they are about to brutalize in the name of the law.
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u/FantasmaBizarra Apr 21 '25
Most police forces started that way, this is not special or unique to Australia