Harassment from military recruiters with little Pentagon oversight

A new GAO report just released today finds that military recruiters are often engaging in misconduct -- whether in the form of harassment or criminal acts -- when trying to meet the growing demand for new enlistees.

The AP wrote a story on this report, and noted that incidents of misconduct have risen over the last few years:

According to service data provided to the GAO, substantiated casesof wrongdoing jumped by more than a third, from about 400 cases in 2004to almost 630 in 2005. Meanwhile, criminal cases — such as sexualharassment or falsifying medical records — more than doubled in thoseyears, jumping from 30 incidents to 70.

There are some 22,000 personnel working for the military'srecruiting program, which cost more than $1.5 billion this year. Onstaff are some 14,000 "frontline" recruiters who must enlist twoapplicants per month.

It's nice to know that our $1.5 billion in tax money is going towards a broken system!

I read part of the report myself.  The most alarming detail I thought was the lack of oversight in general on the part of the Department of Defense.  Here is an excerpt from page 16:

"DOD Lacks an Oversight Framework to Provide Guidance on Recruiter Irregularities, and Has Not Established Criteria to Characterize Irregularities."

So apparently these irregularities are not important enough for the Pentagon to take seriously and develop a system to fix.

Even though I have had run-ins with some recruiters myself, I can understand how much pressure has been put on them by their superiors.  In fact, on page 27 it said something really revealing about how recruiters view their own jobs:

"Over 50 percent of active duty military recruiters responding to the 2005 internal DOD survey stated that they were dissatisfied with their jobs."

A side note: back in March the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that public schools are not allowed to ban military recruiters.

As far as the GAO report goes, you can read it here.

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Other sites blogging about this issue: Tampa Forums, Southern Discomfort, SSquirrel, Crimes and Corruptions of the New World, The Democratic Daily, Nam Guardian Angel.