Family history says my great grandfather was in prison for selling moonshine when the WW2 draft started and was released in order to serve. I've Googled around this topic and haven't found much. Was this common? Were there rules about what types of crimes or people were eligible? If there were, were they decided on a federal level by the military or was it up to local enforcement? What would the agreement be like?
Would love to read more about this if there are any books on this subject. Thanks!
In peacetime a felony usually disqualifies people from service unless they receive a waiver. In WW2 this rule was relaxed and according to a statistic I saw over 100,000 felons were released from prison during the war to serve in the US army. Unfortunately I haven't seen any numbers for non-felons but it's no doubt even larger. Convicted criminals were simply given a choice whether to stay in jail or serve overseas. In addition, at sentencing the judge often gave the defendant a choice between service or prison. People with a criminal record but no longer in prison could also join up. The armed forces wouldn't of course accept any criminal at all and there were also federal guidelines that had to be followed. So for example murder would disqualify somebody from service.
The numbers might seem high for the US but in Europe criminals were often given no choice at all. Both Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union had penal battalions. In Britain it was framed as a matter of fairness, that common criminals shouldn't be rewarded for bad behavior by escaping military service. Only the most hardened criminals remained imprisoned.
An Underworld at War by Donald Thomas might be worth reading but it's written from a British perspective. It does include chapters on what Americans got up to in Europe.