Making the Streets Safer

Would you like to make the streets safer? Would you like to instill a little bit of drive and ambition into today’s youth? Perhaps you’d just like them to have a healthy respect for what they already have and everything they have to look forward to. Or maybe you’d just like to see young people today act like adults and accept some responsibility for a change. If any of those things appeal to you, then here’s a solution that would solve all those problems and more:

Mandatory Military service for all people between the ages of 18 and 24 who aren’t enrolled full time in high school or college. You read it right, mandatory military service. Not only does that keep the young people off the street, it all but eliminates the need for the military to recruit anyone but commissioned officers.

Think about it. Instead of young adults roaming the streets, working two bit jobs, and trying to “find themselves”, they’re either attending college full time or they’re off living in a structured environment and providing a valuable service to this country. What’s even better, when the college student’s graduate usually around the age of 21 or 22, they’ll have to either continue with their education or join the military for a couple years. In any case, no one is really set loose into the general population until they are beyond the age of 24.

Most people over the age of 30 can reflect back on their life and recognize that they weren’t really fully grown up, responsible adults until their mid 20’s. Furthermore, they probably tell you that most of the stupid, dangerous, and illegal things they’ve done, they did before they turned 24.

Of course you’d still have college students doing stupid things and soldiers on leave are capable of causing all sorts of trouble, but overall I think you’d see a dramatic decrease in crimes and commotion caused by bored youth with nothing else to do. Plus the military will forcibly instill a sense of responsibility and an appreciation of consequences into their charges. By the time they got out, they’d be better equipped to be productive members of society.

Maybe this idea won’t solve all of the world’s problems, but it sure would make the streets a little more peaceful.