Special Facilities and Populations - Military Incarceration

The U.S. military has always operated under laws of its own. Today, that is the Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ), enacted by Congress on May 5, 1950 (U.S. Court of Appeals for the Armed Forces, "History," http://www.armfor.uscourts.gov/Establis.htm). Congress created the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Armed Forces as the final appellate court under the UCMJ, but an amendment of the code on August 1, 1984, provided for U.S. Supreme Court review of judgments in a limited number of cases. Before UCMJ, a military Board of Review adjudicated, with the president having final authority to decide conflicts. The UCMJ's Articles 77 through 134 define offenses equivalent to felonies. Article 118, for instance, deals with murder. Offenses are tried in general courts-martial and may result in the imprisonment of offenders. The most serious cases are incarcerated at the military's Fort Leavenworth Penitentiary in Kansas, established in 1875 as a military prison.

In 2003 about 2.1 million men and women served in the U.S. military. That same year, according to Paige M. Harrison and Allen J. Beck in Prisoners in 2003 (Bureau of Justice Statistics, November 2004), 2,165 military personnel were held in military prisons, an 8.9% drop from the 2,377 prisoners in 2002. (See Table 10.1.)

All four of the combat services maintain correctional facilities. In 2003 the Army's six facilities, including the Disciplinary Barracks in Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, housed 45% of all military prisoners. Nearly 30% of all inmates were held in the Navy's eleven facilities, another 20% were in the six Marine Corps facilities, and the Air Force's thirty-four facilities held 5% of all inmates. According to Prisoners in 2003, 58% of military prisoners in 2003 were sentenced to terms of one year or more. The nation's fifty-seven military confinement facilities were operating in 2003 at only 65% of capacity.

Data for 2003 are a snapshot. Levels can shift over time, as shown in Table 10.2. The table tracks military incarceration rates from 1996 to 2003. Total prisoners were down by 582 prisoners during this time. For the Army, the number dropped from 1,106 in 1996 to 840 in 2003, a decrease of 24%. Most other branches of the service showed similar decreases: the Air Force was down 19.7%, the Marines were down 21.3%, and the Navy was down 17.1%. Only the Coast Guard showed a slight increase in the number of personnel in prison, increasing from fourteen prisoners in 1996 to eighteen prisoners in 2003.