Mast, office hours, and data

The Government Accountability Office (GAO) has released a new report: Quality Data Needed to Improve Oversight of Navy and Marine Corps Disciplinary Measures. It makes two recommendations:

• The Secretary of the Navy should ensure that the Chief of Naval Operations establishes a time frame for automating the Navy's process to collect and maintain quality nonjudicial punishment data in its personnel database and then implements this automated process.
• The Secretary of the Navy should ensure that the Commandant of the Marine Corps establishes a time frame for automating the Marine Corps' process to collect and maintain quality nonjudicial punishment data in its personnel database and then implements this automated process.

From the summary:

Nonjudicial punishment, such as forfeiture of pay or a reduction in grade, is a tool to deter misconduct, maintain discipline, and improve performance without going through the court-martial process. Service members onboard a vessel at sea cannot refuse nonjudicial punishment and demand a trial by court-martial when a commanding officer uses the vessel exception. The Navy and the Marine Corps are refining guidance on the use of the vessel exception for nonjudicial punishment and plan to evaluate policy changes as new guidance is issued. For example, in November 2023, the Department of the Navy issued guidance that restricts use of the vessel exception when a ship is undergoing maintenance and is not operational. With these ongoing efforts, the Department of the Navy is on track to improve oversight of nonjudicial punishment and the use of the vessel exception.

The Navy and the Marine Corps have processes in place to report nonjudicial punishment data. However, GAO found, and Navy and Marine Corps officials acknowledged, that the accuracy and completeness of nonjudicial punishment data are limited due to human error and lack of automated processes. The Navy planned to use an automated system by October 2022 to collect nonjudicial punishment data but did not meet this goal due to funding constraints, according to Navy officials. Further, although the Navy issued a revised policy that clarifies reporting on the use of the vessel exception in January 2024, the policy does not address data quality issues stemming from the manual compilation of data. Without establishing a time frame to automate the collection and maintenance of quality nonjudicial punishment data and then implementing these automated processes, the Navy, the Marine Corps, and Congress may be hindered in their ability to provide sufficient oversight of nonjudicial punishment and the use of the vessel exception. Such oversight would include the use of quality data to analyze trends in military justice processes and to measure the effectiveness of discipline-related initiatives.