Recruiting the bottom of the
barrel By David Isenberg
WASHINGTON - United States Army recruits
are not being all that they can be, according to
data released earlier this week by a congressional
committee.
The US Army admitted
approximately 25% more recruits last year with a
record of legal problems ranging from felony
convictions and serious misdemeanors to drug
crimes and traffic offenses, as pressure to
increase the size of US ground forces has led the
military to grant more waivers for criminal
conduct.
Put another way, the percentage
of recruits requiring a waiver to join the army
because of a criminal record or other past
misconduct has more than doubled since 2004 to one
for every eight new soldiers.
Specifically, the army accepted more than
double the number of
applicants with convictions for
felony crimes such as burglary, grand larceny and
aggravated assault, rising from 249 to 511, while
the corresponding number for the US Marines
increased by two-thirds, from 208 to 350.
From September 30, 2006, to September 30,
2007, the army granted so-called conduct waivers
for felonies and misdemeanors to 18% of its new
recruits, an increase of three percentage points
from the previous year. In just the first six
months of fiscal year 2008, the army has granted
waivers to 13% of its recruits.
The 2006
and 2007 Pentagon data released Monday show for
the first time the number of dispensations issued
for specific felonies. The number of army waivers
for aggravated assaults with a dangerous weapon
rose to 43 from 33. Waivers for burglaries
increased to 106 from 36. Waivers for possession
of narcotics, excluding marijuana, rose to 130
from 71 and for larceny to 56 from 26.
This problem is mainly in US ground
forces. Felony waivers in the navy fell from 48 in
2006 to 42 last year and the air force had none in
either year.
Waivers granted for felonies
and other crimes constitute the majority of all
waivers - about 60% for the army, and 75% for the
marines. But other exceptions, such as being
overweight are also increasing, suggesting that
the army and marines are bringing in lower-quality
recruits. The army has created a special program
that gives overweight recruits a year to meet the
standards. Overall, only one in three young men in
the general population meet the physical, mental,
educational and other eligibility requirements to
enlist in the armed forces.
And, in recent
years the army has been accepting more recruits
who are not high school graduates. Back in late
2005, the military started a high school
equivalency program for high school dropouts.
According to recent congressional
testimony by former assistant secretary of defense
Larry Korb, the proportion of new army recruits
with high school diplomas dropped from over 90% in
2003 to 84% in 2005 to 71% in 2007 - the lowest
levels in at least 25 years. Further, in the last
three years, the amount of recruits who scored in
the lowest category, Category 4, has gone up
six-fold.
This is the latest evidence to
confirm a trend that started a few years ago and
has been getting worse. Generally approved at the
Pentagon, waivers allow recruiters to sign up men
and women who otherwise would be ineligible for
service because of legal convictions, medical
problems, or other reasons preventing them from
meeting minimum standards.
According to a
February 2006 article in Salon, the army said that
17% (21,880 new soldiers) of its 2005 recruits
were admitted under waivers. Put another way, more
soldiers than are in an entire infantry division
entered the army in 2005 without meeting normal
standards.
This use of waivers then
represented a 42% increase since the pre-Iraq War
year of 2000. In fact, the article continued, even
the already high rate of 17% underestimated the
use of waivers because "the Pentagon combined the
army's figures with the lower ones for reserve
forces to dilute the apparent percentage".
But contrary to what some military
officials say, the use of waivers is not confined
to minor infractions such as misdemeanors. There
has also been a significant increase in the number
of recruits with what the army terms "serious
criminal misconduct" in their background. This
category includes committing aggravated assault,
robbery, or vehicular manslaughter; receiving
stolen property; and making terrorist threats.
On the bright side, in 2007 the
active-duty army and marine brought in about
80,000 and 35,000 active-duty recruits,
respectively; the number of 2007 recruits with
felony conviction waivers amounted to less than 1%
of the total soldiers and marines recruited that
year.
And an analysis of the waivers found
that those with criminal waivers and medical
waivers tend to do better in recruit training.
They tend to finish recruit training. They tend to
re-enlist at higher rates and receive more awards
for valor than those without waivers.
Still, those who think that worrying about
high school dropouts and criminal records is much
ado about nothing should remember that on the last
day of January 2005, Steven D Green, a former army
private accused of raping a 14-year-old Iraqi girl
and murdering her family, sat in a Texas jail on
alcohol-possession charges. He was an unemployed,
19-year-old high school dropout who had just
racked up his third misdemeanor conviction. Green
had received a moral waiver.
A link
between pre-service behavior and criminal acts
while in the military should come as no surprise
to Pentagon officials. A 2003 study done for the
deputy assistant secretary of defense for military
personnel policy found that a number of research
studies have been conducted to isolate factors
associated with destructive behavior by military
personnel.
Two areas of concern have been
identified: (1) lack of effective prescreening
procedures to identify military entrants with
criminal records and other behavioral adjustment
problems, and (2) inadequate management practices
that have allowed the retention on active duty of
military personnel who have shown a pattern of
substandard behavior. As a result, a number of
individuals are in positions where destructive
acts could have the most serious consequences.
A 2007 study by the Center for Naval
Analyses found that those with waivers were "quite
a bit more likely" than other recruits to be
separated from the service for misconduct within
two years, and "recruits with felony waivers have
the highest chance of a misconduct separation," it
found.
David Isenberg
is an analyst in national and international
security affairs, sento@earthlink.net. He is also
a member of the Coalition for a Realistic Foreign
Policy, an adjunct scholar with the Cato
Institute, contributor to the Straus Military
Reform Project, a research fellow at the
Independent Institute, and a US Navy veteran. The
views expressed are his own.
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