Escalation Forces US Army to Resort to Recruiting Convicts

Barbara Ferguson, Arab News

WASHINGTON, 16 February 2007 — The number of recruits with criminal records given waivers to enter the US Army has more than doubled since 2003 because of the Iraq war and lawmakers and other observers are worried the struggles to fill the military ranks has forced the military to lower its standards.

According to data compiled by the Defense Department, the number of army recruits needing waivers for felonies and serious misdemeanors, including minor drug offenses, has grown since 2003. The number of waivers granted to army recruits with criminal backgrounds has grown about 65 percent in the last three years, increasing to 8,129 in 2006 from 4,918 in 2003, Department of Defense records show. The sharpest increase was in waivers for serious misdemeanors, which make up the bulk of all the army’s moral waivers. These include aggravated assault, burglary, robbery and vehicular homicide.

The military routinely grants waivers to admit recruits who have criminal records, medical problems or low aptitude scores that would otherwise disqualify them from service. Overall the majority are moral waivers, which include some felonies, misdemeanors, and traffic and drug offenses. “The data is crystal clear. Our armed forces are under incredible strain and the only way that they can fill their recruiting quotas is by lowering their standards,” said Rep. Marty Meehan, D-Mass., who requested the information from the Pentagon. “By lowering standards, we are endangering the rest of our armed forces and sending the wrong message to potential recruits across the country.”

Fewer than 3 in 10 people ages 17 to 24 are fully qualified to join the army. That means they have a high school diploma, have met aptitude test score requirements and fitness levels, and would not be barred for medical reasons, their sexual orientation or their criminal histories.
The Defense Department has also expanded its applicant pool by accepting soldiers with criminal backgrounds and medical problems like asthma, high blood pressure and attention deficit disorder, situations that require medical waivers.

Last year, the Baltimore Sun wrote that there was “a significant increase in the number of recruits with what the army terms ‘serious criminal misconduct’ in their background” — a category that included “aggravated assault, robbery, vehicular manslaughter, receiving stolen property and making terrorist threats.” From 2004 to 2005, the number of those recruits rose by more than 54 percent, while alcohol and illegal drug waivers, reversing a four-year decline, increased by more than 13 percent.

In June, the Chicago Sun-Times reported that, under pressure to fill the ranks, the army had been allowing into its ranks increasing numbers of “recruits convicted of misdemeanor crimes, according to experts and military records.” In fact, as the military’s own data indicated, “the percentage of recruits entering the army with waivers for misdemeanors and medical problems has more than doubled since 2001.”

One beneficiary of the army’s new moral-waiver policies gained a certain prominence this summer. After Steven Green, who served in the 101st Airborne Division, was charged in a rape and quadruple murder in Mahmudiyah, Iraq, it was disclosed that he had been “a high-school dropout from a broken home who enlisted to get some direction in his life, yet was sent home early because of an anti-social personality disorder.”

Recently, Eli Flyer, a former Pentagon senior military analyst and specialist on the relationship between military recruiting and military misconduct, told Harper’s magazine that Green had “enlisted with a moral waiver for at least two drug— or alcohol-related offenses. He committed a third alcohol-related offense just before enlistment, which led to jail time, although this offense may not have been known to the army when he enlisted.”

With Green in jail awaiting trial, the Houston Chronicle reported in August that army recruiters were trolling around the outskirts of a Dallas-area job fair for ex-convicts. “We’re looking for high school graduates with no more than one felony on their record,” one recruiter said.

Law enforcement officials report that the military is now “allowing more applicants with gang tattoos,” the Chicago Sun-Times reports, “because they are under the gun to keep enlistment up.” They also note that “gang activity maybe rising among soldiers.”

The paper was provided with “photos of military buildings and equipment in Iraq that were vandalized with graffiti of gangs based in Chicago, Los Angeles and other cities.”

A Milwaukee police detective and army veteran, who serves on the federal drug and gang task force, noted that other “gang-bangers are going over to Iraq and sending weapons back...gang members are getting access to military training and weapons.”