Until the year 1970, one could stay out of the draft if you got a college deferment--hence the rich white boy deferment.

I had three friends who were able to get CO status, none of them did any special service. It was a deferment, like getting a college deferment, or a medical deferment.

If you lived in a large enough city, and were lucky enough to have a fairly high draft number, in the late 60s through the end of the war, you didn't have much to worry about. So many draftees were not showing up for induction, the military fell very far behind in coming to find you, which was virtually impossible in those days if you didn't want to be found. At that time, the military made a decision to focus on sweetening the pot for those who freely enlisted to keep the cannon fodder well stocked.

My recollection is that those who did jail time for refusing to report were people wanting to make a political statement, and I don't remember many of them. I did have friends who managed to argue with their draft boards to stall for time until the war ended--another common tactic. Because of the bureacracy, and the numbers of boys not showing up, appealing, etc. it bogged the system down, especially in the big cities.

And then there were the guys who went to Canada. Eventually they got a pardon. Not too much suffering there, either. Those who suffered the worst were those who refused to go early on--mid 60s I'd say. They were the ones most likely to be jailed for their stand. But I don't think there were ever that many draft resisters in jail at any given time.

As to Israel, right now they are jailing the refuseniks who won't go into the terrortories.