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thedrifter
02-14-07, 06:45 AM
Marines, Army lowering bars for criminal recruits
The Associated Press
Tucson, Arizona | Published: 02.14.2007


WASHINGTON — The Army and Marine Corps are letting in more recruits with criminal records, including some with felony convictions, reflecting the increased pressure of five years of war and its mounting casualties.

According to data compiled by the Defense Department, the number of Army and Marine recruits needing waivers for felonies and serious misdemeanors, including minor drug offenses, has grown since 2003. The Army granted more than double the number of waivers for felonies and misdemeanors in 2006 than it did in 2003. Some recruits may get more than one waiver.

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 number of felony waivers granted by the Army grew from 411 in 2003 to 901 in 2006, according to the Pentagon, or about one in 10 of the moral waivers approved that year.

Other misdemeanors, which could be petty theft, writing a bad check or some assaults, jumped from about 2,700 to more than 6,000 in 2006. The minor crimes represented more than three-quarters of the moral waivers granted by the Army in 2006, up from more than half in 2003.

Army and Defense Department officials defended the waiver program as a way to admit young people who may have made a mistake early in life but have overcome past behavior. And they said about two-thirds of the waivers granted by the Marines are for drug use, because they — unlike the other services — require a waiver if someone has been convicted once for marijuana use.

Lawmakers and other observers say they are concerned that the struggle to fill the military ranks in this time of war has forced the services to lower their moral standards.

"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 has been working to get additional data 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."

Army spokesman Paul Boyce said Tuesday that he is concerned because the Pentagon data differs from Army numbers. But overall, he said, "anything that is considered a risk or a serious infraction of the law is given the highest level of review."

"Our goal is to make certain that we recruit quality young men and women who can keep America defended against its enemies," Boyce said.

The data were obtained through a federal information request and released by the California-based Michael D. Palm Center, a think tank that studies military issues.

"The fact that the military has allowed more than 100,000 people with such troubled pasts to join its ranks over the past three years illustrates the problem we're having meeting our military needs in this time of war," said Aaron Belkin, director of the center.

Belkin said a new study commissioned by the center also concludes that the military does not have any programs that help convicted felons adjust to military life.

In recent years, as the Iraq and Afghanistan wars have dragged on, the military has also relaxed some standards in order to meet recruitment demands. The Army, for example, increased its age limit for recruits from 35 to 42, and it is accepting more people whose scores on a standardized aptitude test are at the lower end of the acceptable range.

Ellie

10thzodiac
02-14-07, 07:22 AM
Sorta reminds me when the Gunny would say, "We need a couple more warm bodies up here, on the double !" http://us.i1.yimg.com/us.yimg.com/i/mesg/tsmileys2/34.gif

drumcorpssnare
02-14-07, 09:27 AM
Criminals in the military is nothing new. They should be afforded the same training that would allow for their "survival", and then be put on the front lines...for the duration of the conflict. If they survive, they are free men. Simple.
drumcorpssnare:usmc:

hankhoffman
02-14-07, 12:14 PM
Wouldn't it be better to lower the education requirements than to lower the criminal standards? I know some drop outs that would like to enlist.

ggyoung
02-14-07, 12:44 PM
In past times the Marines would take punkazz kids in They found a home were people wanted, they had 3 good meals a day. Lots of times these punkazz kids made damn good combat Marines. They would make the USMC there life. I found that some of these punkazz kids made better Marines than lots of the ones that had lots of schooling.

thedrifter
02-14-07, 01:03 PM
Wednesday, Feb. 14, 2007
Lowering the Recruiting Standards?
By Mark Thompson/Washington

The U.S. Military has lots of complex missions, from fighting wars to building the advanced equipment and weapons needed to fight them. People are always amazed, for instance, the first time they step foot into the mile-long Air Force Plant No. 4 on Fort Worth's west side and see multi-million-dollar fighter jets rolling off the assembly line. But as stunning as that is to behold, it's nothing compared to the job of retooling more than 100,000 kids into U.S. soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines year after year.

And as the Iraq war drags into its fifth year next month, the raw material that the Defense Department has been molding into freshly-minted troops since 9/11 is becoming a little frayed. That's led the military to boost recruiting incentives, but even that is not always enough. So when the sign-up bonuses don't bring in sufficient bodies, the military has long held its nose and issued a variety of waivers to allow once-barred candidates to join the services.

Not surprisingly, given the grinding ground war in Iraq, the Army and Marine Corps are the two branches issuing the most waivers these days. The Army granted more than double the number of waivers for felonies and misdemeanors in 2006 than it did in 2003, the year of the Iraq invasion, according to just-released Pentagon data. Such waivers allow recruits with criminal records, medical problems or poor aptitude scores to enlist despite problems that otherwise would bar them from service. Most are so-called "moral waivers," which include some felonies, misdemeanors, and drug and traffic offenses. Such waivers grew in the Army from 4,918 in 2003 to 8,129 last year. For the Marines, the total grew only slightly, from 19,195 to 20,750 (the higher Marine total is due largely to its stricter anti-drug rules for recruits).

Democratic Congressman James Moran recently expressed concern to Army leaders over the trend. "The percentage of recruits who have received medical, moral or criminal record waivers has doubled," he said at a House Appropriations Committee subcommittee hearing Feb. 9. "It was about 10 percent—it's now a little over 18 percent." Army Secretary Francis Harvey responded by noting that recruits with waivers survive training just as well as those without them. "We have not found any difference in the attrition between those that we gave waivers and we didn't give waivers," he said.

The data were released by the Michael D. Palm Center, a think tank associated with the University of California at Santa Barbara. The new center continues the work of what had been called the Center for the Study of Sexual Minorities in the Military, which studies the impact of the Pentagon's "don't ask, don't tell" policy designed to keep active homosexuals out of the military.

Interestingly, the waiver data suggests that the Iraq war may actually be a boon to the quality of people enlisting in the Air Force and Navy. Even as the Army and Marines have had to be a little less choosy about their recruits, the number of moral waivers issued for Air Force and Navy recruits has actually declined. The Air Force moral-waiver count fell from 2,632 in 2003 to 2,095 last year; the figures for the Navy were 4,207 and 3.502.>

Pentagon officials say the waiver program is a way to give young people who made mistakes in the past a second chance. That's a line they use only, of course, when there aren't enough untainted bodies marching into the military's recruiting stations.

Ellie

Chuck Lewis
02-14-07, 04:44 PM
In past times the Marines would take punkazz kids in They found a home were people wanted, they had 3 good meals a day. Lots of times these punkazz kids made damn good combat Marines. They would make the USMC there life. I found that some of these punkazz kids made better Marines than lots of the ones that had lots of schooling.
Amen!
I entered the Corps right out of jail!
I don't believe that either the Corps or I have any regrets for "Our" decision.

ggyoung
02-14-07, 04:53 PM
Chuck Lewis_________++++Good for you. In my plt. at SD 1964 we had 3 brought in by the sherrif of SD county in hand cuffs. All three made damn good Marines. This was found out in Vietnam. One of them had been in the army before. People now days have there nose so far out of joint that they can't see a good supply of Marines.

DWG
02-14-07, 06:41 PM
I was two steps ahead of the law when I went in. Not quite a choice of either/or but close. We also had some guys with no education. Not stupid, just for some reason or another they never learned to read. One guy I knew dropped out of 2nd grade and couldn't read a word; but ask him any question in the handbook and he knew the answer! Maybe it would work for jail bound kids if they understood that "THIS IS YOUR LAST CHANCE". A lot of people had their lives turned around by the military; just don't accept any crap from them and let them know it!:evilgrin:

10thzodiac
02-14-07, 09:39 PM
I think Chesty had it right myself !

"Take me to the Brig. I want to see the real Marines."

Sometimes I wondered if that s-hit-bird private would be a better 6 than the "goody two shoes" ?

SF

10thz http://us.i1.yimg.com/us.yimg.com/i/mesg/tsmileys2/22.gif

ridingcrops
02-16-07, 10:39 AM
Saw the same thing in the 60s at MCRD San Diego. We had a couple who were sent there by a Judge who told them Marines or jail. And had a couple who couldn't read and that's when they had the idiots platoon.
You know I wouldn't hesitate to go into the **** with any of them as they turned out to be damn good Marines. The Corps was lucky to have had them.

pinuccio
02-16-07, 10:59 AM
When I joined in 1969, there were several that were ordered by the court to enter the Marines or go to jail. So it's nothing new. By the way, most of them were damn good Marines.

marbar
02-16-07, 02:18 PM
In 1983 I was stationed with a Marine that was from Chicago. He was a drug dealer and the prisons were overcrowded when he got busted. He had a family member that worked in a prison. Knowing what prison life would be like he opted to join the Corps when he was given the option. He was a damn good MARINE.

capmarine
02-16-07, 09:22 PM
4% of the Corps have been allowed in without HS diplomas,to date.