Penal military unit

Penal battalions, penal companies, etc., are military formations consisting of convicted persons for which military service in such units was either the assigned punishment or an alternative to imprisonment or the death penalty.

Great Britain

See Battalion of Light Infantry of Africa formed in 1832 and made up of men with prison records who still had to do their military service or soldiers with serious disciplinary problems.

See Afrika-Brigade 999 (AKA Bewährungseinheiten 999, Strafbataillon 999, Bewährungstruppe 999, Division 999).

See Strafkompanie, which was not a military unit but a penal work division in the concentration camps.

The story, "The Warlord" by Soviet writer Vladimir Karpov recounts Karpov's military career from a penal company serviceman to a Guards Colonel awarded the title of Hero of the Soviet Union.
Nikolai Dostal's critically acclaimed 11-part television serial, Penal Battalion ("Shtrafbat" ("Штрафбат", Shtrafbat at the Internet Movie Database), was released in 2004.
The Dirty Dozen, a 1967 American film about a fictional U.S. penal military unit directed by Robert Aldrich, from the novel by E.M. Nathanson.
The novels by Sven Hassel about the (fictional) 27th Penal Panzer Regiment.
Between Heaven and Hell (film) features a paroled military prisoner sent to a company that contains a variety of misfits.
The hero of Paullina Simons' Bronze Horseman trilogy, Alexander Belov, is sentenced to serve in a Red Army penal battalion.

Conquest, Robert, Kolyma: The Arctic Death Camps, Methuen Press, (1978) ISBN 9780670414994
Hatch, Gardner N., American Ex-prisoners of War: Non Solum Armis, Turner Publishing Company, (1988), ISBN 9781563116247
Krivosheev, G.F. Soviet Casualties and Combat Losses in the twentieth century, London, Greenhill Books, 1997, ISBN 9781853672804, available online (in Russian) [1].
Lebed, Alexander (Gen.), My Life and My Country, Regnery Publishing, Inc. (1997) ISBN 9780895264220
Manazeev, Igor, A 'Penal' Corps on the Kalinin Front, Journal of Slavic Military Studies, Vol. 15, Issue 3, September 2002 OCLC 201968754
Mawdsley, Evan, The Stalin Years: The Soviet Union 1929-1953, Manchester University Press (2003), ISBN 9780719063770
Suvorov, Viktor, Inside The Soviet Army, Hamish Hamilton (1982), ISBN 0241108896
Tolstoy, Nikolai, Stalin's Secret War, New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston (1981), ISBN 0030472660
Toppe, Alfred, Night Combat, Diane Publishing (1998), ISBN 9780788170805