Publisher's Synopsis
There is long-standing evidence that large racial disparities exist within the military justice system. A task report commissioned by the Department of Defense in 1972 found that while Black service members composed 11.5 percent of the armed forces, they constituted 34.3 percent of those tried in a court-martial. About 50 years later, several studies have indicated that the size of these disparities has hardly changed. Although the existence of racial disparities within the military justice system has been well documented, the causes of these disparities have not been determined. Identifying the factors that are causing disparities is crucial to developing tailored policy options to reduce these disparities. In this report, the authors use a mixed methods approach to identify how disparities in the military justice system can arise, at what stages of the system the disparities occur, and what factors can explain the. disparities.
