Summary

The military services have extensive policies and procedures to encourage applicants to self-report criminal history information. Among other things, the services repeatedly query each applicant, providing as many as 14 opportunities to disclose any criminal offenses to as many as seven different service and military entrance processing station officials. The services also conduct periodic inspections and investigations to ensure the integrity of the entire recruiting process, which includes the disclosure of disqualifying information. The services, however, are not always able to obtain or substantiate all available criminal history information because of service policies and federal, state, and local laws and policies that sometimes preclude access. Several Defense and Justice Department initiatives are underway that could improve the process of obtaining criminal history information. However, DOD and the services have yet to formulate a coordinated approach to use these initiatives to better ensure that the military does not enlist and train persons with undesirable backgrounds.

GAO noted that: (1) the military services have extensive policies and procedures for encouraging applicants to self-report criminal history information; (2) among other things, the services repeatedly query each applicant, providing as many as 14 opportunities to disclose any criminal offenses to as many as seven different service and military entrance processing station officials; (3) the services also conduct periodic inspections and investigations to ensure the integrity of the entire recruiting process, which includes the disclosure of disqualifying information; (4) the services, however, are not always able to obtain or substantiate all available criminal history information because of service policies and federal, state, and local laws and policies that sometimes preclude access; (5) the services do not use fingerprints to substantiate the majority of enlistees' criminal histories; (6) without full fingerprint searches, the services cannot detect undisclosed aliases and ensure that they are aware of all available criminal history information; (7) federal law and state and local laws and policies, which generally limit or prohibit disclosure of criminal history information, impede the recruiting community's access to certain criminal history information; (8) in addition, state and local governments sometimes charge fees or require fingerprints to release the information; (9) available criminal history databases (not controlled by DOD) are incomplete; (10) of further concern is the services' practice of sending enlistees to basic training before the results of criminal record checks are received; (11) this practice results in training costs that could be avoided; (12) several DOD and Department of Justice initiatives are underway that could improve the access of obtaining criminal history information; (13) these initiatives have the potential of making available to DOD and the services more complete information upon which to make moral waiver decisions and expedite the process for obtaining record checks; and (14) however, DOD and the services have not yet formulated a coordinated approach for using these initiatives to better ensure that the military does not enlist and train individuals with undesirable backgrounds.