Saturday, July 25, 2020

All present and (nearly all) accounted for

On July 16, 2020, Global Military Justice Reform ran this post concerning the services' annual military justice reports for FY19, and noted that the one for the Coast Guard -- with apologies to Daniel Webster, it is a small service, yet there are those who love it -- was AWOL. Well, some time between then and now, the Coast Guard's report was added. If you go on the Joint Service Committee on Military Justice website, you can find it there -- the 82-page article 146a(b), UCMJ report now weighs in at 89 pages. Now that we have it, we can update the data previously presented for general and special courts-martial. Unhelpfully, the Coast Guard neglected to provide a figure for non-judicial punishments.

General and special courts-martial:

Army, 628
Navy, 245
Marine Corps, 254
Air Force, 415
Coast Guard, 14
Total, 1,556

Non-judicial punishment:

Army, 24,852
Navy, 4,323
Marine Corps, 6,728
Air Force, 4,055
Coast Guard, unknown
Total, 39,958

These data exclude FY19's 322 summary courts-martial. If they were included, they should be added to the NJP numbers. See Middendorf v. Henry, 425 U.S. 25 (1976). That would drive the grand total of disciplinary cases up to 41,836, with a whopping 96.3% handled non-judicially. The missing Coast Guard masts would yield a slightly higher figure. 

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