Every branch's top legal official was called on by the House Armed Services Committee to explain why black service members face significantly higher rates of military justice system punishment than their white counterparts -- and to explain their plans for eradicating racial discrepancies in the ranks.
Largely the collective judge advocates general cited strategies like diversifying recruiting, providing education and unconscious bias training, and having conversations about race and culture. However, none of the JAGs explained how or why such strategies have not already effectively been implemented -- despite the military being aware of racial discrimination across the force since at least 2017.
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In 2017, Protect Our Defenders (POD) published a report on data it gleaned from the Air Force through the Freedom of Information Act. The report revealed that black service members were substantially more likely than white service members to face military justice or disciplinary action across all the branches of the Armed Forces. Specifically, in the Air Force, black airmen on average were 71 percent more likely to face court-martial or Non-Judicial Punishment (NJP) than white airmen.
POD's 2017 report resulted in a 2019 Government Accountability Office report -- the nation’s first report to Congress to analyze data on racial disparities in the military justice system. The GAO report confirmed the prevalence of racial disparities within the force.
Then, just last month, POD published a second report showing that the Air Force -- aware of these issues of racial discrimination -- had not done enough to address the issue and had attempted to cover up its lack of effort in recent years.
Both of POD's reports and the subsequent GAO report were prominent topics of questioning from lawmakers.
Why did no branch reach out to POD after the 2017 report was published to discuss eliminating racial disparities? Why were POD's FOIA requests only partially fulfilled and, in some cases, completely ignored by the DoD? Why was the Air Force the only branch of the Armed Forces with comprehensive enough data for POD to even conduct the report? And why -- three years after POD's report was first published -- are the JAGs just now talking about fundamental strategies like education and conversations?
While the Air Force recently took a significant step forward by confirming the DoD's first-ever black service chief, Rockwell had a lot to answer for as the JAG for the branch most closely scrutinized for allegedly covering up its lack of progress in eliminating discrimination.
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The collective JAGs provided few answers to lawmakers' questions, instead committing to future collaboration with POD and Congress. Eradicating these disparities will require a "whole of government and societal approach," Air Force Lt. Gen. Jeffrey Rockwell said. The DoD "appreciated" the work the GAO conducted, providing them with a basis of standardization moving forward, Navy Vice Admiral John G. Hannink said.
On the need for future collaboration, Congress agreed.
"We are at a transformational point in this country -- civilian and military," House Armed Services Committee Chair Rep. Jackie Speier, D-Calif., said. "I think that there is a lot of work to do, there's a lot of data that has to be collected -- but we have to make sure it is consistent across all the services and that there is transparency."
"I hope we do not have to have another hearing where we have outside groups coming to us saying we can't get the information," Speier added, referencing the years POD spent procuring its data. "We have to be forthcoming to the American people."
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