Data analyzed in a new report by the federal Government Accountability Office (GAO) on military recruiting abuses has revealed a 50% increase in recruiter abuses from 2004 to 2005. The report found that allegations of abuse increased from 4,400 cases to almost 6,500 and substantiated cases from 400 to nearly 630. Perhaps most strikingly, criminal violations by recruiters rose from 30 to 70 cases. The GAO cautioned that these numbers represent only the data that has been collected, with the GAO’s report explaining that various branches of the military do not track all allegations of recruiter abuses. Consequently, the report’s abstract states that the data examined “likely underestimate[s] the true number of recruiter irregularities.” In defining “irregularities,” the report described them as “willful and unwillful acts of omission and improprieties” that are either perpetrated or alleged to be perpetrated by recruiters in order to “facilitate the recruiting process for an applicant.” These “irregularities” encompass a wide range of abuses including administrative paperwork errors, failing to disclose disqualifying eligibility criteria, instructing recruits to hide medical conditions or legal problems, falsifying documents, and sexual harassment.
The GAO undertook the study in light of the military’s inability to meet many of its recruiting goals over the past year and the rise in aggressive recruiting tactics to compensate for these failures. The report—in a point that is worth noting for antiwar activists—argues that the “viability of the All Volunteer Force depends, in large measure, on the Department of Defense’s ability to recruit several hundred thousand individuals each year”—confirming what many counter-recruitment activists have argued, mainly that by reducing the number of military recruits, the state’s capacity to conduct wars can be limited. The GAO concludes that the military recruiters have had difficulties meeting their goals since the invasion of Iraq in March of 2003 and that the problem has grown as the war has continued. According to data cited within the report, three of the eight active and reserve components have missed their goals. With the increase in abuses and reported abuses, the GAO argues that there is the potential “overly aggressive tactics” that “adversely affect the Department of Defense’s ability to recruit and erode public confidence in the recruiting process.” In order to mitigate the effects of such abuses, the GAO investigated oversight of recruiting abuses, the factors contributing to such abuses, and the procedures for addressing them.
The GAO found that while there have been numerous cases of alleged and substantiated abuse, there are limited oversight mechanisms within the Department of Defense and the military for both determining the extent of abuse and dealing with the abuse. The Department of Defense has no oversight framework that requires branches of the military to maintain and report on recruiter abuses, nor is there a common criteria for categorizing abuses or establishing shared terminology, so abuses can be characterized as “recruiter error” in the Army or “malpractice” in the Navy, making it difficult to both assign responsibility for and to quantify abuse. Moreover, data collection tends to be decentralized and spread out across multiple databases and is further hindered by the branches’ failure to track all allegations of recruiter abuse. While the task ultimately falls under the mission of the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Personnel and Readiness, officials with that department reported that they deal with recruiter abuses infrequently and generally only in response to congressional inquiries, further stating that they have no procedure for regular oversight of recruiter abuses. This is problematic for the military in that there is no way to effectively quantify the frequency of abuses or to adequately determine when corrective action is needed, and for the public, this means that tax money--$1.5 billion this year—continues to be spent on recruiting programs for which there is little oversight and no real knowledge of the frequency of abuse.
In the report, the GAO also identified a number of factors that contribute to recruiting abuses. Among these, was the occupation of Iraq, with three quarters of active duty recruiters who responded to a Department of Defense survey stating that the Iraq War is making it difficult for them to meet their recruiting goals. Recruiters also blamed the economy—with a relatively low unemployment rate— as they must now compete more aggressively with the civilian job market. Other factors—described as “typical challenges of the job”—that may lead to abuses include “demanding work hours,” pressure to meet monthly goals, and recruiter performance metrics and reward systems that in some branches of the military reward recruiters for the number of recruits that enlist and report to basic training, rather than the number that successfully completed basic training. According to the report, there are approximately 22,000 military recruiters assigned in 2006, with 14,000 being “frontline recruiters” who are assigned a monthly goal that varies depending on the branch of service but usually is around two recruits per month. Recruiters are evaluated yearly with performance evaluations that examine the number of contracts that they have signed by new recruits, with data indicating that the number of abuses may increase near the end of each month when recruiting goals are tallied. Fifty percent of recruiters were described as generally “dissatisfied” with their jobs, with as many as three-quarters saying that they would seek another job in the military if they had the opportunity.
When recruiting abuses are alleged, the military has procedures to deal with them both through the Uniform Code of Military Justice as well as the individual branch’s own procedures. Each branch’s recruiting effort has a designated investigative authority to handle allegations, while the branch’s Judge Advocates hold the primary responsibility for adjudicating criminal violations in the recruitment process. Once an abuse has been substantiated, the punishment ranges from a verbal reprimand to a court martial at the discretion of the recruiter’s commander. However, while these procedures exist, the military occasionally fails to document disciplinary action, making a full evaluation of these procedures difficult. To that end, the GAO’s report recommends the establishment of a comprehensive oversight framework by the Department of Defense, a reporting requirement across the military, the development of standardized terminology and criteria for reporting abuses, and internal systems that allow for better tracking of abuses.
