Old Wine In New Bottle: British Military Justice System Remains Broken

A recently leaked British Ministry of Defense report details how (at least according to the BBC, which fails to link to the actual report it cites) its new-ish Defence Serious Crime Command (DSCC) is plagued by similar issues that led to its creation:  primarily, the lack of sufficiently trained and resourced investigators as well as insufficient support to victims, particularly in the arena of military sexual assaults. 

The creation of the DSCC in 2022 was animated by the need to "to investigate serious crimes independently, outside the military's chain of command." Unlike in the U.S. military justice system, in which commanders still (despite structural conflicts of interest plus lack of training and experience) retain prosecutorial discretion over the bulk of crimes found in the Uniform Code of Military Justice, the Brits rightly moved prosecutorial discretion away from commanders to lawyers outside of the chain of command starting back in 1996, with additional statutory reform in 2006. 

Despite being far ahead of the U.S. in recognizing & remedying the dysfunction and unfairness of military commanders wielding prosecutorial discretion,  the Brits are apparently still struggling with the need for greater resourcing & professionalization of criminal investigations. 

As with the U.S. military, the deleterious effects of such mismanagement are felt by individual British service members, who for example -- at least according to this reporting -- don't feel confident that their allegations will be taken seriously. 

At least the British military is seemingly supported by its leadership in fixing these issues to a far greater degree than across the pond, where the U.S.military is commanded by a president who was found by a jury to to have committed sexual assault and has joked about grabbing women by their genitalia -- and further "led" (I use the word loosely) by a Secretary of Defense who was credibly accused (just read the report) of sexual assault and is more worried about how much testosterone American troops have than about making those in uniform more confident that their allegations of sexual assault will be taken seriously (ps:  what I believe was criminally reckless behavior by U.S. Navy military commanders led to a young U.S. service woman's brutal murder at the hands of a fellow Navy service member last year; murderer went to jail, but same leadership & same broken system will, I fear, lead to more sexual assaults and murders of young American women in uniform ... far more needs to be done in the memory of Vanessa Guillen and Angelina Resendiz, and for all who volunteer to wear the American military uniform).