This has been going on for a while, and it turned out not to be a good idea to have these scumbags mixed in with the regular troops (and I think that's how it's done, there's no special penal legion stuff). As it happens, all the tacticool guys who have volunteered and trained with firearms on a regular basis have fared much better than the vetshit boomers who haven't touched a gun in decades, yet those boomers had a field day bullying the younger folks for showing off with all that "fancy crap". But it's understandable, they're old and unwilling to change and admit that their old ways aren't as effective anymore. Now imagine that instead of backward boomers doing the bullying, you have ex-convicts getting uppity and being insubordinate. It can also motivate the zogbots to incriminate innocent citizens just to send them to the field as extra meat.