I believe that juvenile records are (can be) sealed. I am not saying that either would be a match for your son. However, if he were interested...it could be a goal, as it was for lovemyson's son. As part of a recruitment package training and deployment I believe can be negotiated. or one can make oneself available in such a way that would pretty much delimit deployment conditions. Enlistees and the military sign a contract. Because I have not been in the military I do not know how binding it is. Such a thing can be found out online, I would think.
I wanted the military for my own son (but in full disclosure there were times I wished for prison, too) so that he would learn. Which speaks more to my own mental state.) Lovemyson, has lamented that her son's enlistment circumstances pretty much could well put him in harm's way--in the infantry. She wrote that she understand he could die--but she preferred the risk presented in these circumstances, with the upside that they presented--to his dying from an overdoes of heroin/
None of us in life, come to the table with all options open. Many, many doors have closed for most of us....By the same token, sometimes the best option is not all rosy either. That is real life. There is no predicting who will thrive and who not, in adversity--or when or where. If that were true the military (or all other institutions) would have a near 100 percent success rate. They do not because self-selection cannot be predicted, even by the individual him or herself. Sometimes we flourish in conditions that even we ourselves would not have predicted, even in failure. Failure can be the best of teachers.
I would not make assumptions at this point about what is not open to your son, and what it--until you know for sure. For example, many cops were juvenile delinquents. They turned it around. Experience is not one size fits all. Nor is the route to a better life, the same for all of us.
I do not have a sense of what are your son's talents and interests (or what they were) before this. You do. What is your sense of what would suit your son? What might interest him? What his needs and wants from life (beyond pills) might be?
M criticizes me that I push my son towards college which personally I hold as a high value. It turns out too that my son does too. He reads literature and about culture and world affairs, and history and languages, for recreation. He may or may not ever go back to college, but he knows what nourishes him. If there will a motivator that will be it.
I am not pushing any one thing. I am saying that there are next steps and there are answers. Your son on some level knows what he needs and what he has to do. Or he can.
