In the United States, misdemeanor jail time ought to be replaced with significant rehabilitation.

You propose a punishment at whose end the offender has an "associate degree", a high-level job, and a "reason to live". And all I have to do is commit a crime? If your 1967 example is any indication, this will only have a negative effect on deterrence. But what about those of us who are foolish enough to believe it's wrong to break the law? If we're undereducated and underemployed, we'll have to starve while our criminal brethren rise to positions normally occupied by "upstanding members of society". Is that really a recipe for long-term "societal good": social mobility by criminality? Wouldn't it be better to spend the vast amount of money this program would require on the at-risk communities themselves? Instead of hiring drill sergeants to try to persuade criminals to look for jobs, why not use that money to help CREATE jobs? I don't think the spiking unemployment rate is the result in a sudden increase in "character" defects, although the reverse causality is normal. This plan resembles the dynamic in O. Henry's "The Cop and the Anthem". When you make life on the inside more lucrative than life on the outside, you invite crime. As you admit that lack of education is a contributor to crime, solve that problem by subsidizing education in inverse proportion to means. In the Nordic countries they even pay allowances (in addition to free education) to students, and they have exceptionally low crime rates. By disposing of public money that way, instead of on expensive colleges just for criminals, we would be putting the carrot back on the outside. Much of the reason people opt not to further their education is after all its cost in money and time, which itself could be used to acquire means for immediate survival (perhaps illegally). And a "low-level job" is, as you suggest, little better. Keep jails the way they are today (places of incapacitation and general deterrence) or replace them with fines or other punishment, but I see no utility in spending a penny on "rehabilitation" that could be spent on preventing the situations that contribute to the behavior to begin with. Let the free education and employment service be the analogy to the church in the O. Henry story, not just another reason to go to jail. Your plan also begs the question, what of the repeat offenders? You say they won't be eligible for "rehabilitation", which is odd, considering they're the ones least likely to learn their lesson from a simple jail term. But you introduced your plan as an unqualified replacement of jail time with rehabilitation. The status quo is that first-time offenders very rarely serve jail time, which goes primarily to repeat offenders. Am I to take it that repeat offenders will no longer be jailed, or that this plan replaces only a minority of jail time with rehabilitation? The expungement issue is separate from the rehabilitation issue. As you admit, "rehabilitation" will not completely prevent recidivism; therefore, expungement is simply a choice you are making in order to make it easier for the criminal to re-enter society. But expungement can be and often is made available even in the wake of normal, nominally non-rehabilitative jail sentences. If unemployment is what causes recidivism, and if criminal records are the barriers to employment, wouldn't the problem be solved by simple expungement?