Source: Nashua Telegraph
Date: March 10, 2007
The Duke of Wellington, the hero of Waterloo, called the British army of the 1830s “the scum of the earth.” Navies were once manned in part by drifters shanghaied off the streets.
In myth, and perhaps fact, a judge not infrequently looked down over the bench and said, “Son, I’ll give you a choice. Enlist and we’ll forget this little problem.” In tradition, the old armies were believed to be the refuge for, among others, those running from a record.
That was then. Today the military wants bright, healthy volunteers with a diploma, good aptitudes and no criminal record. But it’s estimated that fewer than three of 10 people aged 17 to 24 meet the full criteria.
Under the stress of the Iraq war, the Army has added 30,000 recruits and seeks 35,000 more. Not surprisingly, it has loosened its standards a bit on fitness, schooling, testing. And it now feels that a few run-ins with the law can be overlooked.
During the 1990s, the Army granted waivers for criminal offenses to 5 to 7 percent of its enlistees. Last year, the proportion climbed to 11.7 percent. Some say the Army is scraping the bottom of the barrel. Others call it inevitable given the demographic the military draws from.
The Department of Justice says 29 percent of American adults have an arrest record and the rate is much higher among young males. The two million inmates in American prisons include a huge pool of young men, many of whom meet most of the military’s other criteria.
The number of recruits who got a waiver of criminal record in 2006 was 8,126, according to Defense Department data ferreted out by the Michael D. Palm Center of the University of California at Santa Barbara. By far the greatest number had been involved in drug matters and “serious misdemeanors,” such as petty larceny.
But the Army did recruit about 840 felons, convicted of serious crime, last year. Certain classes of criminals, such as drug traffickers and sexual offenders, are excluded. Former teachers, coaches, employers and such are consulted before waivers are granted.
How do these recruits perform? They seem to get no special attention; research is scanty. The Defense Department found in the early 1990s that they were somewhat more likely than other recruits to get early discharges for cause.
The differences are “statistically significant but hardly overwhelming,” the Palm Center study concludes. Indeed, the military service of former offenders is a “success story” compared to the recidivism rate of ex-convicts.
The services also hold a substantial number of people who evaded the record checks and remain in the “criminal closet,” the Palm Center study notes.
An all-volunteer military will always be the refuge of a few young people who are hiding from a record, or hope to clean up a record and get a new start.
Nothing wrong with that. But as the Army digs deeper into this pool of recruits, it must track their training and careers with more than benign neglect.
– Cape Cod Times