The FY19 reports of the Judge Advocates General under article 146a(b), UCMJ are now online at the Joint Service Committee on Military Justice site. (The Coast Guard's report is AWOL.) This 82-page document deserves close study because it provides a useful snapshot of the military justice system. As in the past, the data are not presented, well, uniformly. For example, the Army alone distinguishes between cases that have been arraigned and those that have been tried to completion.One thing that emerges, and is pertinent to the current blizzard of preserve-the-current-system-or-Western-Civilization-as-we-know-it-will-wither pronouncements, is the fact that only a small fraction of UCMJ violations wind up in courts-martial; the lion's share -- arguably the ones most closely tied to good order and discipline -- are disposed of through non-judicial punishment.
Here's how the services stack up:
General and special courts-martial:
Army, 628
Navy, 245
Marine Corps, 254
Air Force, 415
Total, 1,542
Non-judicial punishment:
Army, 24,852
Navy, 4,323
Marine Corps, 6,728
Air Force, 4,055
Total, 39,958
These data exclude FY19's 180 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 41,680, with a whopping 96.3% handled non-judicially.
Regrettably, the data do not reveal (1) how many of the 1,542 general and special courts-martial were the result of a refusal to accept NJP, as article 15, UCMJ permits for anyone not attached to or embarked in a vessel; (2) how often personnel who were offered and declined NJP were sent to a summary court-martial; or (3) how often any member sent to a summary court-martial exercised the article 20, UCMJ right to refuse trial in that forum.
Moreover, there is no way to know from this report how many technical UCMJ violations were handled through purely administrative measures such as counseling, administrative reprimands, administrative separation without prior punishment, boards of inquiry, etc. Does any report cover these matters, Gene?
ReplyDeleteThanks, John. I don't know of a site or sites where those data are available online. If any reader can provide links, that would be terrific.
DeleteGene: A similar observation could be offered regarding the Canadian Forces (CF), particularly with respect to Op HONOUR. There is no correlation of data or statistical analysis regarding disciplinary action under the Code of Service Discipline and administrative action (largely under the DAOD 5019 series). Based upon comparing the annual 'JAG Reports' on the Code of Service Discipline to the Chief of the Defence Staff's (CDS) self-authored 'report cards' - the periodic reports on Op HONOUR - we can surmise that administrative action is markedly more frequent than disciplinary action. However, we cannot identify the administrative consequences of each disciplinary process (e.g. if the accused was acquitted, was there subsequent adverse administrative action?). We also have no visibility on circumstances in which disciplinary investigations were completed, but, instead of laying charges, the chain of command then relied on the disciplinary investigation to take administrative action. Nor do we have any visibility or correlation regarding disciplinary charges that were laid, then withdrawn, followed by significant administrative action taken. Anecdotally, it appears that, under Op HONOUR, the chain of command is increasingly using administrative measures to punish alleged wrong-doing. The CF has not presented data or statistical analysis that might assist with such evaluation. And it would be difficult for any third party researcher to obtain such information. If my hypothesis is correct, I would not anticipate that the CF would be particularly forthcoming with such data.
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