Racial Disparities in the Department of the Air Force Military Justice System

Abstract: 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.

Read the full article
Report a problem with this article

Related articles

  • More for Policy & Practice

    Temporal trends in opioid-related care and pain among Veterans at the end of life

    Abstract: Context: In response to the opioid crisis, federal guidelines were implemented, including the Veterans Health Administration's (VA) Opioid Safety Initiative in 2013. The impact of policies on patients near the end of life is unknown. Objective: Examine temporal trends in opioid prescribing, pain, and opioid overdoses among Veterans near the end of life. Methods: Retrospective, time series analysis of VA decedents between October 2009 and September 2018 whose next-of-kin participated in VA's Bereaved Family Survey (BFS). Using multivariate regression to adjust for sociodemographic and clinical covariates, we examined temporal trends in outpatient opioid prescribing, uncontrolled pain based on BFS report, and opioid overdose-related hospitalizations, in the last month of life, overall and by clinical diagnosis (cancer versus non-cancer). Results: Among 79,409 decedents, mean daily outpatient opioid dose in morphine milligram equivalents in the last month of life decreased from 4.6 mg in 2010 to 2.1 mg in 2018 (adjusted change -0.20 mg/year; P