Report: Recruiters breaking rules
Posted on Tuesday, August 15, 2006
URL: http://www.nwanews.com/adg/National/163555/
WASHINGTON — With several military branches falling short of their recruiting goals, recruiters are increasingly twisting arms and breaking the rules, according to a government report issued Monday.
There were 70 criminal recruiting violations in the fiscal year that ended Sept. 31, 2005, up from 30 the previous year, according to the Government Accountability Office, Congress’ auditing and investigation arm.
The actual number of violations, which can include failing to report health problems, previous run-ins with the law and drug use, is likely underreported, the study said.
Arkansas’ Rep. Vic Snyder, the ranking member on the House Armed Services subcommittee on military personnel, called for the report with a fellow Democrat, Rep. Pete Stark of California.
Fear of putting their lives at risk in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, coupled with a relatively healthy employment picture at home, has made military service less attractive to potential recruits and put the heat on recruiters to meet their goals, Snyder said.
“We’re in a more difficult recruiting environment,” Snyder said. “If you want to have an allvolunteer force, you need better management tools for recruitment.”
The GAO study called on the Department of Defense to create a common set of recruiting guidelines for all branches of the military and to track all allegations of abuse.
The Pentagon largely concurred with the report’s suggestions, though it found no need to centralize all of the paperwork in the Department of Defense. In a July 24 letter to the GAO, Michael Dominguez, principal deputy at the Office of the Undersecretary of Defense, said that the Pentagon should provide more oversight, but that the actual reporting of recruiting violations should be left to each branch of the military.
“While each of the Services currently has a system and process for accomplishing this task,” Dominguez wrote, “it is clear that there is room for improvement.”
Dominguez stressed that recruiter irregularities were not widespread. But they are on the increase.
According to the GAO report, the 629 total substantiated cases of recruiter wrongdoing in fiscal 2005 represented just 0. 3 percent of the 215, 198 recruits that entered the military that year. The previous year, there were 409 instances of substantiated, but not necessarily criminal, cases of wrongdoing, or 0. 2 percent of total recruits.
The total number of recruiting irregularities, which includes allegations, substantiated cases and instances classified as unintentional recruiter error, jumped from 4, 388 to 6, 602 during the same time period.
One of the most glaring problems, Snyder said, is that in all of the services except for the Marines, recruiters are paid when a recruit signs on. Marine recruiters are evaluated when recruits finish basic training, a rule designed to push them to find better-qualified people.
Since the beginning of the fiscal year, each of the active-duty branches of the military met their recruiting goals. But the Army National Guard, Army Reserve and Navy Reserve all fell short, according to the Pentagon.
“Recruiters are under tremendous pressure to bring in the numbers,” said David Segal, director of the Center for Research on Military Organization at the University of Maryland. “They are probably more likely than at other times to compromise the process.”
If recruitment goals aren’t met, Segal said, morale and troop readiness could suffer.
“Soldiers are like military equipment,” Segal said. “They do wear out. If you’re not making your goals, you’re going to deploy more of them or leave them deployed for longer.”