The Department of Defense (DoD) needs to improve how it collects and analyzes data from its military judicial system in order to guard against racial disparities that may result from those judicial functions, according to a May 23 Government Accountability Office (GAO) report.
The report finds that several of the military service branches – including the Army, Navy, and Air Force – do not maintain a centralized data set that would shed light on racial disparities found in their military justice processes.
Furthermore, each branch has its own unique approach to data collection, leading to discrepancies that limit the usefulness of future military reports, GAO said.
“The Departments of the Army, Navy and Air Force varied in the extent to which they included 18 statutorily required elements in their reports on racial and ethnic disparities in their military justice and discipline processes and personnel policies,” stated GAO.
“These elements related to items such as investigations, court-martial panel selection, and sentencing, as well as data on accession, retention, and promotion rates,” the watchdog agency said.
One example where branches differ is on the inclusion of data on “commander-directed investigations, which are subject to commander discretion and could result in serious disciplinary action,” GAO said.
GAO offered up six recommendations, including one for each of the service branches that advises developing and implementing a process to collect and maintain accessible data particularly regarding race and ethnicity that can help facilitate a centralized visibility over these areas for each of the three service branches.
Another three recommendations are directed to the Secretary of Defense and include:
- The Secretary of Defense should ensure the Under Secretary of Defense for Personnel and Readiness designates a department-level office as the oversight entity responsible for coordinating the military departments’ assessments of racial and ethnic disparities in military justice and discipline processes;
- That they work to ensure the department-level office designated to oversee coordination of the military departments’ racial disparity assessments coordinates with the military departments to establish standard terminology and reporting categories, analyses, and reporting format and content to be used in future assessments of racial disparities in military justice and discipline processes; and
- That they work to create a department-level office designated to coordinate with the military departments to comprehensively assess the military justice and discipline process to identify all areas where racial and ethnic disparities may exist, including in the selection of court-martial panels and sentencing, and the corresponding analyses to be conducted.
DoD concurred with four of the recommendations, and partially concurred with the recommendation directed to the Air Force.
